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‘Biblical’ Disaster in Haiti: Pat Robertson and the Curse of Unyielding Ignorance

By Matt Recla

…lation of Haiti is somewhere around thirty percent. In Port-au-Prince that number jumps to almost forty percent. The majority of these churches are Pentecostal. These churches are overwhelmingly independent, indigenous Haitian entities, though some are linked to North American denominational Pentecostal churches. Haiti, along with Jamaica and Puerto Rico, is home to one of the fastest growing Pentecostal populations in the Caribbean. As I watch th…

As a Queer Catholic Woman I Had High Hopes Before the 2023 Catholic Synod on Synodality

By Emma Cieslik

…elt that little sacristy door slightly creak open as I fumbled to dial the phone to call my mom. Was this it? Sadly, no. My excitement faded as I followed the livestream of the Synod of Bishops, punctuated by anger as I read the summit’s 41-page report. This past Friday I saw New Ways Ministry’s statement, “Synod Report Greatly Disappoints, But We Must Have Hope,” while walking down a busy DC thoroughfare. In it Francis DeBernardo, executive direc…

Indonesia Hears Islamist Arguments For LGBT Criminalization; Zambian Churches Oppose Condom Distribution in Prisons; Lithuanian Conservative Manifesto Calls LGBTs Enemies of Freedom; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…lves to be in a same-sex marriage,” reports Nicholas Hellen, “Doubling the number threatens the fragile truce on an issue that has divided the church since same-sex marriages were allowed in England and Wales in March 2014.” Iraq: Interview with Kurdish human rights activist Ayaz Shalal, a human rights activist from the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, was interviewed by the Washington Blade during a visit to the U.S. this month. Shalal said he ex…

Pope Invites his Flock to Join Facebook: Is the Digital Reformation Here?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…g with regard to religious practice in particular. Both internet and smart phone users were more likely to participate in religious or spiritual groups than were people who do not regularly use digital media. By “participate,” the researchers were referring to physical, geographically located, face-to-face engagement: attending meetings, volunteering, taking leadership roles, and donating money. In all of these categories, participation was higher…

Racial Justice Will Be Top Priority for New Prez of the United Church of Christ

By Frederick Clarkson

…nsidering new ways of “being church.” His vision is a bold one, but on the phone he quietly shrugs it off, saying it’s just a continuation of the Congregational tradition of more than 400 years. ________________ Frederick Clarkson: In Beyond Resistance you say that we are living in the dawning of a “postmodern” age of Christianity that may last for 500 years. What kind of church do you see emerging? Dorhauer: The first thing I want to say about th…

The Passion of Katniss: How the Hunger Games Confronts the Trauma of Violence

By Michael Schulson

…answer to those questions is, in my opinion, a most definite yes. Over the phone, Deaton explained that Collins captures the helplessness of its hero–and, through that sense of helplessness, the dynamics of trauma. “Trauma really is about the moment of freezing,” said Deaton. “What is traumatic is when there’s nothing that can be done.” Collins, he said, sustains a kind of trapped tension throughout the books—that feeling that you’re “never really…

For Clergy Who Ministered Through the AIDS Crisis Covid is Both Eerily Familiar and Puzzlingly Different

By Lynne Gerber

…from ministry, locked down at home, and “trying to be of service over the phone and zoom” to people in his church facing another pandemic. Pieters is part of a unique cohort for whom the current pandemic is both eerily familiar and puzzlingly different. LGBT Christian clergy who ministered in queer communities in the 1980s and 90s are engaging Covid-19 using some lessons learned from AIDS ministry in the years before treatment. They’re also grapp…

Discovering “Little Syria”—New York’s Long-Lost Arab Neighborhood

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…eet project is part of the same effort. “We are persistent,” he told me by phone, “because these stories have a real impact on people.” Telling stories grounded in real Arab-American history is the only way to reach understanding. And understanding is still sorely needed. One imagines what the Islamophobic activists who conjured the “Ground Zero Mosque” debacle a couple years back would do with the news of an Arab neighborhood in the shadow of the…

Dear Lindsay Lohan, I’m Sorry

By Haroon Moghul

…at, and I apologize for being part of such a mean gesture. In fact I had a phone conversation with a prominent American imam last night—in Islam, we say subhanallah at such coincidences—and he mentioned in passing how offended many white American Muslims were by this very kind of gesture. On reflection, I can see why. I don’t find racial insensitivity humorous directed at me. The least I can do is not support it. And the least I can do is the leas…

How Do We Break the Cycle of Religious Violence in South Asia?

By Sunita Viswanath

…religiously-motivated pogroms afterwards. A few weeks ago, I spoke on the phone with a leader of New York City’s Bangladeshi Hindu community, who was extremely resistant to making the connection between the persecution of his fellow Hindus in Bangladesh and the persecution of Muslims in India. He insisted, “Please don’t tell me about India. I only want to focus on my people, Hindus in Bangladesh.” I suggested that there was folly in focusing on t…