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New Patriarch, Same Patriarchy: Despite Glowing Praise For New SBC President, There’s Just One Problem

By Caroline Matas

…, but allow him to make mistakes and know he has a “safe place to park his car of vulnerability.” In a church setting where male headship is enshrined in both the home and the pulpit, women and girls continue to receive conflicting messages on how to confront an abuser in a way that threads the needle between “doormat” and “usurper,” “boss” and “enabler.” The scandal of divorce Just one year before the Houston Chronicle published a devastating rep…

Vaccine Mandates are Constitutional; Religious Exemptions are Unnecessary and Harmful

By Andrew L. Seidel

…ce protect our soldiers in the military, our students in school, our healthcare workers on the front lines—everyone. Vaccine mandates are undoubtedly constitutional. The Supreme Court explained back in 1905 that freedom can be limited, especially when wielded to harm others’ rights: “The liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States does not import an absolute right in each person to be at all times, and in all circumstances, wholly fre…

Mitt Romney: Wooden Pastor or Real Boy?

By Mary Barker

…lment of his Church callings, I can’t help but be a tad critical. Pastoral care and compassion for one’s fellow parishioners are the bread and butter of my Mormon community—as well as my Catholic community, and my Methodist one, and even my Zen meditation group (I’ve expanded my spiritual associations over the years). But there is a compassion that reaches beyond the fellow brother or sister of our spiritual communities and that the Republican Par…

The White Nationalist Fringe Just Took a Giant Step Closer to the Center of the GOP

By Annika Brockschmidt

…ed, a right-wing extremist killed counter-protester Heather Heyer with his car. Beforehand, neo-Nazis and white nationalists had marched through the streets of Charlottesville carrying the now-infamous Tiki torches while chanting “Jews will not replace us.” And while many commentators condemned the violence and images of the rally, most missed what the marchers meant by “Jews will not replace us.” It was a direct nod to the conspiracy theory of “W…

Australians Vote Overwhelmingly For Marriage Equality; and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…to hell. Butler says one of them shouted in English that “Trump will take care of you!” As to what the protesters are really after, Butler said, “My sense is that the group who engaged this frenzy of effigy burning, stalking and harassment want to defend ‘Brazil’ as a place where LGBTQ people are not welcome, where the family remains heterosexual (so no gay marriage), where abortion is illegal and reproductive freedom does not exist. They want bo…

COVID-Denying Father Sergei is Just the Latest Example of the Russian Orthodox Church’s ‘Holy Man’ Problem

By Katherine Kelaidis

…er, the most popular of these geron—roughly equivalent to a Roman Catholic cardinal—have fairly frequently developed significant followings far beyond the intimate, and by necessity, scarce relationships of spiritual fathers to their spiritual children. And this is where the problem lies. Because of the traditional and institutional weight (vis-a-vis the sacraments) given to the geron, the situation arises in which a man with significant spiritual…

Rev. Rob Lee Lost Congregation For His Anti-Racism Speech: Here’s Why He Should Have Packed His Bags First

By Daniel Schultz

…s, but I’m surely not the only pastor to wince at the exchange. One of the cardinal rules of working in a church is that you never, ever—ever—tell them they’re doing their faith wrong, even if they clearly are, unless you have your bags packed and the car warmed up. There is nothing so fatal to the bonds between shepherd and flock as questioning their faith. The only way it can be received is as an unfair accusation, particularly in a system where…

The Meaning of Make Believe (Why Religion Doesn’t Have to Be “Real”)

By Neil Ellingson

…—was a serious passion. These objects also became ones I liked to hold and carry around with me. With the religious paraphernalia they completed my cache of what psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott called “transitional objects.” Like a worn-out teddy bear, they existed somewhere between the subjective world of my imagination and the objective world of tangible people and things. Transitional objects, in Winnicott’s view, help children move from the sec…

Joined at the Hip: White Nationalist Christianity and Donald Trump

By Peter Laarman

…to church no more makes you a Christian than being in a garage makes you a car.” The main takeaway of the Douthat column, however, and the bit that truly boggles the mind, drastically undercuts the overall thrust of his argument. This is where Douthat concedes that a significant number of the Good Christians have, in fact, gone over to Trump because they feel that the liberals have taken their country away from them. Oh, my goodness gracious! Dout…

Public Shrines to Treason: Charlottesville and the Cult of Confederate Memorialization

By Spencer Dew

…ntly oppressive army, and outsiders to boot—power-hungry and disrespectful carpetbaggers. The comparison is also, of course, hyperbolic, as the use of an actual ISIS tactic of turning cars into weapons, at the “Unite the Right” rally, starkly reveals, just as the optics of the “Unite the Right” rally—and it was nothing if not full of photo-opportunities—reveal the bedfellows sharing a platform in relation to such statues, some with swastika armban…