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Meet the New (Straight White American Male) Mormon President

…peaks directly to God,” be updated each time the church gets a new president? At least Russell M. Nelson has the same cadence as Thomas S. Monson, so the transition to new lyrics should be about as seamless as the transition to a new straight white American male LDS president….

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The Pope and Social Media: A Digital Counter-Reformation?

…uploads, and cellphone text messages rely only on the authority of those expressing and representing their own experience—and that authority is almost instantaneously shared with those who read, listen, watch, and may re-present their own self-authorized interpretation of what they have gathered. Inviting young Roman Catholics to pass along messages to their priests from the magisterium, as the Pontifical Council for Social Communications has don…

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With New York Joining DC in Defiance Methodist Church Faces Showdown on LGBT Ordination

…s on same-sex marriage and the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” do not exist. Though many were already defying church policy, the biblical obedience campaign struck a chord at a time in our nation’s history when public policy and law were rapidly changing to ensure equal rights for LGBTQ people. Clergy and laypersons across the denomination took up Bishop Talbert’s exhortation and did so with the support of Reconciling Ministries…

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Papal Profanity: The Vatican’s Pagan Museum

…sojourn in Paris, the Laocoön Group and Apollo Belvedere had inspired an explosion of new museum construction throughout Europe.   As I’ve said before, new ways of seeing emerge with surprising suddenness in the modern period. Instituting those new ways of seeing was very much what modern museums were designed to do. So a pagan idol becomes a work of fine art, then it becomes a piece of national treasure, then it is looted, then it is repatriated…

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Aliens, Nanobots, & Microbes: The Science of Secular Apocalypse

…technological growth outpaces human understanding]. And then you get this new field of existential risk studies, where the conclusions are not dissimilar in many ways to a lot of the religious views. You know, there’s going to be some sort of catastrophic event in the future, perhaps we might even survive it, but we’ll enter into this permanent state of privation. Is it the case that these new narratives are different, or are they just an extensi…

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Why It’s Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong

…of God returns to Jesus who is being put forward by the Christians as the new temple… the new meeting place between God and human life. So, the transfiguration story is the Christian version of Hanukkah. Once you get that framework in Mark’s gospel, Rosh Hashanah to Passover, then you can begin to see it in Matthew and in Luke. It’s very different because Matthew is very Jewish and Luke is very Gentile-oriented. Luke tells a different sort of sto…

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‘Russkii Mir,’ the Russian Equivalent of ‘Blood & Soil’ Ideology at the Heart of Putin’s War, Explained and Rejected by Theologians in New Statement

…s capitulated to “liberalism”, “globalization”, “Christianophobia”, “homosexual rights” promoted in gay parades, and “militant secularism”. Undergirding Russkii Mir, according to the statement’s authors, is the heresy of “ethno-phyletism,” or building the church around a particular “race or tribe.” Before you run to the dictionary—or, let’s face it, a search engine—it helps to understand the background of this charge. In theory, the Orthodox world…

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Conservative French Catholics a ‘Rightwing Patriarchal Bunch’?; Indonesian Prez Decries Anti-LGBT Discrimination; Romanian Prez Warns Against ‘Religious Fanaticism’; Global LGBT Recap

…participate in an event at the Speakers’ Corner, subject to assessment.” Sex between two men is illegal in Singapore and punishable with up to two years in prison, though the law is rarely enforced. The law, which dates back to the island’s colonial period, makes no mention of lesbians. Observers say foreign companies are unlikely to get a permit to get involved in the event in 2017. United Kingdom: Government will issue posthumous pardons for men…

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Conservative Christians Oppose New ‘Inter-Religious’ University

…he exclusive truth of their own way, distance themselves further and further from other traditions. Are these the sorts of religious leaders we want to be producing, to take the helm in the era of globalization? The greatest argument against the skeptics lies in the tangible excitement of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim students at the new Claremont university. “I have a great desire to learn about others,” said Susan Goldberg, a rabbinical stud…

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