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The Queerness of Christian Ethics: A Conversation with Rev. Elizabeth Edman

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…talk about developing a bulletproof faith—which has everything to do with spiritual survival. Yet one of the ways you talk about surviving is in understanding your own value. Then when someone comes at you, show them the dignity and respect they ought to be showing you. One could say we’re “forced into” living this way as a matter of survival, but the truth is we’ve gotten really good at it. I’ve seen us treat each other that way again and again…

Praise the Lard This Holiday Season

By Becky Garrison

In the spirit of the annual evangelical Christian push to “Keep the Christ in Christmas,” the United Church of Bacon (UCB) placed a holiday themed billboard in Las Vegas, Nevada featuring two strips of bacon hiteheadearing a Santa hat and a Star of David respectively. This billboard’s slogan reads “Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah from the 13,000 Atheists and Skeptics at the United Church of Bacon,” replete with the tagline, “Bacon is our God b…

Synod or Sin Oddly: Vatican Encourages Catholics to ‘Walk Together’ as Long as the Hierarchy Leads the Way and Decides the Route

By Mary E. Hunt

…ing companions,” “co-responsible in mission,” and “common obedience to the Spirit” bear little resemblance to reality. Such spiritualized, stylized, not to say slippery, phrases make for wonderful copy. But they bear no resemblance to a church in which women are categorically prohibited from priesthood and therefore almost all decision-making; in which LGBTIQ+ people are seen as products of “gender ideology” and unfit for sacramental marriage and…

Ken Ham Uninvited for Mocking Fellow Speaker’s Version of Creationism

By Julie Ingersoll

…re. He has been uninvited for exhibiting a “proud, ungrateful and divisive spirit.” Since the decision was announced late last week, there has been a good bit of back and forth including hundreds of comments on Facebook, responses and press releases from the parties involved, and the release, by Ham, of a two-minute clip from a convention talk that he says is at issue. It seems Ham had been critical of one of the other speakers who is not a young…

Jeffress is Both Right and Wrong on Religion & Politics

By Peter Montgomery

…ogate candidates’ religious beliefs. “The question is not whether personal spiritual beliefs shape a politician’s values and policies, but what spiritual beliefs mold those values and policies.” Indeed there may be times when it is legitimate to ask whether a candidate’s religious positions would have a direct impact on policy. Religious Right activist David Barton has declared that the Bible is opposed to progressive taxation, capital gains taxes…

Oh Say, Can You See?: 9/11 Flag Displays and the Flag’s Symbolic Power

By Spencer Dew

…onately defended and debated throughout our history. The flag embodies the spirit of our national commitment to those ideals…. To the world, the flag is our promise that we will continue to strive for these ideals. To us, the flag is a reminder both that the struggle for liberty and equality is unceasing and that our obligation of tolerance and respect for all of our fellow citizens encompasses those who disagree with us — indeed, even those whose…

A Pastor’s Suicide: Addressing Mental Health in Black Churches

By Darnell Moore

…subsequent presence in Christ. I was not alone in such skewed thinking. Spirited Sunday morning worship services at the church I attended in southern New Jersey were almost always animated by the types of behaviors that most people associate with neo-Pentecostal, holiness, or some Baptist churches: vivacious hand clapping, foot-stomping, ecstatic exhalations, dancing, and tongue-speaking when the spirit was really high. One particular Sunday,…

Emanuel’s Pulse: A Plea for Black Church–LGBTIQ Solidarity

By J. Kameron Carter

…uel’s Pulse: Pulse / cardiovascular movement / on the dance floor / sacred spirit’s thumb and strum / now under cardiac / arrest’s / storm and stress / Pulse’s Emanuel / a metaphysical condition of holy ghostliness on the dance floor / feel the beat / breath’s percussive rhythm / pulsation’s respiration / its aspirational inhalation / its exasperational exhalation / Emanuel’s Pulse, a “pneumatic pact“ In Charleston and now Orlando, last year was t…

The Mystic in the Rye: JD Salinger’s Religious Fiction

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…of the New Age syrupy and superficial, whereas his own version of written spiritual exercises was hard-nosed and irreverent. He knew that the task of the maturing self was to let the self go, to clear it out in order to make room for spirit to enter. When Zooey Glass was trying to find his own way, the only alternative to the theater he seriously considered was a PhD in ancient Greek. Sappho’s poetry and Plato’s philosophy haunt these pages. Sali…

I Met God, She’s Black: An Exhibit Makes the Black Female Body a Temple

By Anita Little

…told me before the exhibit that politics cannot sustain itself without the spirit. These political movements that are happening are very important, but the undercurrent of these movements is a desire to change the spiritual consciousness of the community first and the society second. When black women decide to heal, the community heals, and then the society heals. Oftentimes, we’re at the forefront of political and cultural change. There is a need…