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The Benedict Opt-Out: Why Christian Self-Isolation Won’t Work

By Kaya Oakes

…n will help parents to keep their children faithful. Given the statistical number of Nones among Millennials and Gen X and the seemingly unpreventable increase in those numbers, these children, like Emily, or the children of many homeschooling parents, will eventually encounter peers who are not religiously affiliated. Given the way technology works, they will also inevitably find a way to expose themselves to popular culture. And the question rem…

Conversion Story #643 (not a real number)

By Amina Wadud

These days, when ever you say you are Muslim by choice, you get people asking about your conversion. Mostly they want to know why. This curiosity comes equally from those who are already Muslim and those who are not. I used to tell the same basic steps—although I hardly think my own individual door lights up any bulbs of excitement. Maybe because no lightbulbs went off for me either. I was a seeker. I was raised in a loving Christian environment…

From Pastor to Harvard’s ‘Godless Church’ Planter

By Becky Garrison

…nnect with other clergy persons. Over the past 18 months, I’ve developed a number of relationships with people who contact me because they find themselves in a similar situation. They ask questions, I don’t push. I’m simply a listening ear…someone safe for them to talk to. What was the response to your coming out as an atheist? An enormous number of Christians have threatened to do physical harm to me. Many others have been kind in their response…

Closed-Door Conference in Poland Shows How US Conservative Christian Networks Export ‘Conversion Therapy’

By Antonia Gross and Rina Nikolaeva

…“former lesbian.” Both carry the title “pastor,” and both are IFTCC board members as well as co-founders of the “Changed Movement,” whose activities range from publishing “testimonies” of people who’ve supposedly changed their sexual orientation to lobbying for anti-LGBTIQ policies in the US. In 2023, a representative of the “Changed Movement” spoke at a hearing in opposition to gender-affirming healthcare before the Montana Senate Judiciary Comm…

New Poll Finds “Growing Appetite” for Mixing Religion and Politics

By Sarah Posner

…of voters are interested in hearing them talk about their faith. While the number of Americans who believe it is important for members of Congress to have strong religious beliefs has remained steady since 2010—about 6-in-10, with even more significant majorities among Protestants and Catholics—this poll shows a growing number of Americans who want to hear candidates talk about their religion. On the Republican side, candidates could view this fin…

Mormon-Born Daya Mata Typifies American Yoga

By Andrea R. Jain

…escribed, the path of Kriya yoga, is much more than a fitness routine. For members of the Self-Realization Fellowship, yoga means a path, mediated by the gurus, to experiencing loving union with God. Members consider devotion to those gurus to be invaluable. But for practitioners of more mainstream schools of yoga—the kinds you’d find offered at strip-mall yoga studios, college fitness centers, and even in some churches across the United States—th…

Evolution Challenged in ‘Textbook’ Case: As Goes Texas, So Goes the Nation

By Lauri Lebo

…ience class. And last week they, and a bare majority of their fellow board members, pushed through new science standards that could very likely determine what your kid learns in biology class in the next decade. For more than a year, board members, led by McLeroy, a Young Earth Creationist, had been leading efforts to preserve wording in Texas’ science education standards that waters down the teaching of evolutionary theory: The student is expecte…

The Curious Case of Mormons and LGBT Rights

By Alan Michael Williams

…me quarters, even celebrated—to be a gay Mormon. The Church wants its LGBT members to stick around and be productive. Discrimination against the LGBT community is viewed by Mormons as a real phenomenon to the extent that anyone, regardless of their relationship status, can be harassed, bullied, and treated unfairly based on perceived queerness. In 2009, mid-level Church officials dialogued with members of Utah’s queer community with regard to legi…

LDS Church Rescinds Hurtful Marriage Policy Without Apology

By Holly Welker

…nd suffering that occurred because the church willfully denied many of its members something most people consider “a basic right: the option of having a civil wedding and inviting whomever they please without being religiously shamed and punished for it.” Many are ecstatic over the end of a despised and despicable policy that divided families at a time that was supposed to be unifying and joyous. The policy was utterly unnecessary, unevenly applie…

New History Finally Recognizes Afro-Creole Spiritualists

By Paul Harvey

…racial hierarchy, while the Moorish Science Temple of the 1920s placed its members outside it. By claiming an identity other than “black,” “colored” or “Negro,” the Moorish Science Temple’s members attempted to side-step Jim Crow. In the 1960s the Nation of Islam flipped white supremacy on its head and argued that blacks were the original creation of Allah. Black Lives Matter protestors have been filmed chanting, “This is what theology looks like….