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Equally Blessed: Wear a Rainbow Ribbon to Mass

By Alex McNeill

…h is being manifested, they are going to miss the boat. I believe the Holy Spirit is speaking among the lay people of the church and the Bishops who are not discerning that call, and are not listening to that voice, to their detriment. I think the illogical statements that bishops make about LGBT people and issues cause Catholic people to question bishops’ moral authority, not only on that issue but on other issues as well. We saw with birth contr…

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 “…

Evolution and Creation Fight to the Death: What Emerges from the Ashes

By Philip Clayton

…mon ground—are almost nonexistent? When we ran the global “Science and the Spiritual Quest” program just a decade ago, many leading scientists took moderate views. Religion did not need to be destroyed, they told us, as long as the basic conditions for doing science were not undercut. Theologians and religious leaders responded in kind: religionists have every reason to support scientific research and to learn from its results. You’ll have to look…

Why I Am Still a Christian

By Diana Butler Bass

…t church. I don’t deny that—it would be impossible to—but many people have managed to live admirable lives despite Christianity’s institutional failings. And I write about those people. I’m a realist when it comes to history, and part of that is a realistic assessment of when Christianity has lived up to the teachings of its founder. A People’s History isn’t about war; it is about love of God and love of neighbor. Did you have a specific audience…

Evangelical Stephen Baldwin’s Imitatio Christi & “Reality” TV

By Gabriel Mckee

Over the last year or two, I’ve become an unironic, unapologetic fan of reality TV. I know the criticisms—they dumb us down, they elevate public humiliation—but what I’m really interested in is the way shows like Spike’s Joe Schmo Show or VH1’s I Love Money turn into morality plays about the value of friendship and loyalty. In the best reality shows, the initial rush of schadenfreude is gradually replaced with a genuine affection for the “good gu…

On Religion, Abortion, and Politics: Dr. George Tiller’s Christian Ethics

By Ed Knudson

…to keep former black slaves from full participation in society for another 100 years. Only in the 1960s were African Americans given full legal rights in public life. Then in 1968 came the election of Nixon with his “Southern Strategy.” Ronald Reagan was the first president to explicitly seek the vote of a religious right, now emerging as part of a white backlash against the gains of black citizens in the 1960s. It must be recognized that the Sou…

Christianity Without the Cross

By Rosemary Ganley

…logne. Could there be a connection that one hundred years later, Pope Urban 11 launched the first crusade promising Christian warriors paradise after death? “But the death of Jesus was not a key to meaning, not an image of devotion for the Christians of the first millennium,” Parker and Brock write. “He was risen, a healer, baptized, a shepherd, a teacher, and a friend.” This book is a rock-the-foundations work. Christians have been thoroughly tau…

The Gray Lady’s Regard: Ritual and the Wedding Pages

By Kathryn Lofton

…“40 percent of the ceremonies are Jewish, only 17 percent are Episcopalian, 15 percent are Catholic, 13 percent are other Protestant, and 15 percent are non-religious or non-denominational.” Twelve years later, Jews remain in the lead, although with only 26 percent of the ceremonies. The other cohorts lost statistical heft, too, as 10 percent are Episcopalian, 16 percent are Catholic or Greek Orthodox, 21 percent are other Protestant, and another…

My Womb for His Purposes: The Perils of Unassisted Childbirth in the Quiverfull Movement

By Kathryn Joyce

…ims, based in Pentecostal Word-Faith theology, that all physical ills have spiritual origins. She taught that difficult and painful labors were potentially due to disagreements between the parents over child discipline, while perfect childbirths were the result of proper spiritual preparation. She reportedly has walked out on women in labor on receipt of a prophetic message from God that Satan was deceitfully creating the impression of a troubled…

Niebuhrian Humility and DC Punditry

By Daniel Schultz

…emselves up as dispassionate umpires rising above the partisan fray in the spirit of Niebuhrian humility, when Niebuhr himself would tell them that they were just as prone to error as anyone else. Again, I’ll leave it up to my readers to decide if this is fair to the Villagers or not. I will say that after eight years of George W. Bush’s reign of error, calls for a more technocratic form of government sound welcome. I will also say this much. Rose…