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Why I Won’t Leave the Mormon Church Alone

By Holly Welker

…aled both its own and its members’ resources to support conservative political causes. In the 1970s, when I was a teenager, we had church activities where we were required to write letters to our legislators, urging them not to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. (Even at the time, I wondered why legislators would be impressed by letters from high school students, but ever dutiful, I wrote them anyway.) The LDS church was most recently a major player…

Gen X, Gadgets, and God

By Elizabeth Drescher

…religious Nones shown in the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey and the American Religious Identification Survey, both released in 2008. In this regard, Schwadel offers little new insight. However, Schwadel identified a further finding that is especially important if you’re trying to sustain the relevancy and viability of religious institutions. His research shows that among Gen-Xers who were raised with a religious affiliation, commitment to religi…

Ricky Gervais: Why I’m an Atheist

By Lauri Lebo

…ys anything disrespectful or harsh to Christians. All he does is lay out a case for his atheism, as well as tell a story about how, as a little boy, he came to lose his faith in God. I used to believe in God. The Christian one that is. I loved Jesus. He was my hero. More than pop stars. More than footballers. More than God. God was by definition omnipotent and perfect. Jesus was a man. He had to work at it. He had temptation but defeated sin. He h…

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

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ell could mean that the Bible Christians thought was more or less fixed in canonical form in the fourth century could once again be in play. It’s hard to know what it might mean for the practice of faith or the shape of the Church in the future when my reading of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians relies on a digitally distributed comment from someone in Cincinnati or Calcutta. Yet these relational readings will certainly cross many boundaries—geogr…

Looking For Answers at the Oscars: A Guide to This Year’s Contenders

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…etimes communication technologies facilitated that friendship (a letter, a phone call). In the new age the structure is reversed as friendships are built upon those very communication technologies. We are now databases, plugged into a network. Face-to-face friendships have become interface friendships. A more ethereal ethernet was evoked in Inception. Here too people are linked to each other through a social network, and here too identities are…

Mitt, the Marriotts, and Porn

By Joanna Brooks

…etty common knowledge that porn was the major driver of internet technological and capacity innovation before the advent of the smart phone. And if we want to start a serious conversation about where presidential candidates get their money and how ethical that money is, let’s do it. I have a laundry list of labor, environmental, feminist, and human rights issues with multinational corporations I’d love to start working through. But don’t give me…

Lila Rose Targets Planned Parenthood with Lies

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…rom time to time, with Rose’s fanboys and fangirls. It happened in 2008 at California Catholic where commenters got into a dust-up after a commenter named Sue wrote: “According to the article, she ‘posed.’ How is that different from lying? If one day she tells people she’s 15 and pregnant by a 23-year-old, and another day she tells people she’s 13 and pregnant by a 31-year-old, how is that not lying?” (Arguably, Rose’s most creative defender in th…

“God Created You”: Bishop Supports Gay Ugandans, Defies Death Threats

By Jocelyn Edwards

…ainst gays at Kato’s funeral, locals from his ancestral village refused to carry the casket to where it was to be buried. Some of the gays and lesbians in attendance grabbed the activist’s white and gold coffin, which was draped with a rainbow flag, and hauled it themselves to a space between the dark green trees and foliage to be buried. They would have had to bury Kato, who identified as Christian, without a blessing from any member of the clerg…

Pro-Gay Marriage Mormon Keeps Faith Despite Church Pressure

By Joanna Brooks

…and within days an official at LDS Church headquarters placed a concerned phone call to Melanie S.’s local clergy. Three times her bishop met with Melanie to discuss the video. Because she had affiliated with “Mormons for Marriage,” he questioned whether or not Melanie and her husband should be allowed to keep their temple recommends—certificates that allow the most worthy and devoted Mormons to participate in the faith’s sacred temple rites. Nor…

To: Discovery Institute;
Re: Creationist Tactics Pre-Dating the Exposure of ID as a Fraud

By Lauri Lebo

…vented in the wake of Kitzmiller. What I wrote was that the proposed “critical analysis” and “academic freedom” legislation emerged after Dover; in other words, legislation after Kitzmiller now featured these code words prominently. Even West has to admit this is true, because the bills are based on sample legislation that the Discovery Institute wrote in 2008. West’s post opens with a few recollections of my coverage of the Dover trial commenting…