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Future of Liberal Religion: A Counterculture Blooms?

By Jill K. Gill

…low from afar the NCC’s current “re-envisioning” effort, marked by the July 1 launch of its “Transitional General Secretary’s” 18-month term, I see evidence of a transformation afoot within ecumenism that questions the premise of the either/or accommodational choice Hollinger mentions. We may be misreading what is happening around those widening ecumenical tables. Second, Fosdick’s 1922 sermon might well provide inspiration to the pluralist-advanc…

What’s Wrong with the Controversial Businessweek “Mormon Money” Cover?

By Joanna Brooks

…e, diverse, competitive, professionally managed, and fully capitalistic in spirit and execution—even as her article raises worthy questions about the transparency of LDS Church finances and the allocation of its revenues to humanitarian purposes. (One of Winter’s facts on this latter point has been challenged.) But the cover art makes those worthy questions moot. Today, I’ve been in contact with a few of the sources for the article, and they belie…

Cloud Atlas: This is Some Mystical S*%t

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…alettes, props, and costumes make the divisions quickly comprehensible. The 1973 San Francisco story looks not unlike the 1970s TV series The Streets of San Francisco, while the 2114 sets are a combination of Blade Runner and the Matrix trilogy, and the 1849 set is a bit Master and Commander with some Amistad thrown in. The mixing of times and stories meshes with a mixing of production styles, all overlaid with a mixing of myths. As all myths are…

Reparative Therapy is Quackery, Rabbis Agree—But that Doesn’t Mean it’s Okay to Be Gay

By Jay Michaelson

…species. He argues that because homosexuality is banned by the Torah, its “spiritual” harm is no different from the “emotional” harm done by a child molester; terminology unknown in halacha and surely disprovable in practice, if “spiritual” has any content whatsoever. And he claims that “the current culture” holds that the meaning of life is “the fulfillment of appetites”—which of course is absurd; my same-sex partnership is about love, holiness,…

America Does Not Have a Religious Identity

By Dennis J Goldford

…he Constitution of Religious Freedom, with the deliberate double meaning of 1) the Constitution as a charter of religious freedom, and 2) the act of constituting religious freedom, and Baylor came up with the clever subtitle, God, Politics, and the First Amendment. I was able to give my concluding chapter the title, “One Nation under Whose God?” How do you feel about the cover? I’m actually quite happy with it. Beyond being aesthetically attractiv…

Papal Retirement: A Matter of Conscience

By Mary E. Hunt

…y rectified the situation. But it is fascinating to note that many of those 118 cardinals who will elect his successor are not competent enough in the ancient language to understand, “Quapropter bene conscius ponderis huius actus plena libertate declaro me ministerio Episcopi Romae, Successoris Sancti Petri, mihi per manus Cardinalium die 19 aprilis MMV commissum renuntiare ita ut a die 28 februarii MMXIII, hora 20, sedes Romae, sedes Sancti Petri…

Public Religion in a Post-Christian Age, Graduation Edition

By David Gushee

…hour’s time. I found the sheer rhetorical emptiness of the events deeply dispiriting. Graduation meant nothing other than being done with school. No evidence for any broader purpose for education, or for life, was offered or could be discerned. Single-faith: My oldest child graduated from both a conservative Christian high school and conservative Baptist college, in west Tennessee, before we moved to Atlanta. These schools did not hesitate to off…

Obama, MLK, Not “Nice” Enough to Moderates?

By Paul Harvey

…their own Christian faith calling attention to laws that contradicted the spirit of the Gospel. This, about a man who led doubtless the most religiously-inspired social movement in American history; about someone who staged revivals with Billy Graham, preached at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, praised Southern schools (including denominational ones) that had opened their doors to black students, and penned advice columns in…

The Bible, Brought To You By Wal-Mart

By Paul Harvey

…is dressing room to the set. The reverence on the set and in the film paid spiritual dividends. Years later, according to DeMille, a minister told the English actor who portrayed Jesus: “I saw you in The King of Kings when I was a child, and now, every time I speak of Jesus, it is your face I see.” 2. These films quickly become part of particular evangelical subcultures, giving them a long life long after the initial publicity of the premiere show…

Selling the Idea of a Christian Nation: David Barton’s Alternate Intellectual Universe

By Paul Harvey

…n life in the twentieth century, and through the epochal court cases of the 1940s through the 1970s. The Christian Nation “debate” is not really an intellectual contest between legitimate contending viewpoints. Instead, it is a manufactured “controversy” akin to the global warming “debate.” On one side are purveyors of a rich and complex view of the past, including most historians who have written and debated fiercely about the founding era. The “…