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Bad News for LGBT Anglicans, Mormons, Adventists, Norwegians, Russians, Georgians, Egyptians, Kuwaitis, Saudis…

By Peter Montgomery

…proposal that it allow religious weddings for same-sex couples, reports Agence France Presse, even though most of the country’s bishops supported the proposal. Norway was among the first countries in Europe to grant homosexuals full rights, including marriage and adoption in 2009, but the Church does not marry same-sex couples. Eight of Norway’s 12 bishops said in October they favoured such a move, but on Tuesday the Church’s highest decision-ma…

The Real Mormon Moment

By Joanna Brooks

…th-century LDS Church, to adapt to the new realities of the internet era, including greater openness among Mormons with doubts or concerns about controversial aspects of our history and doctrine. Excommunication is a nineteenth-century Mormon solution to twenty-first century Mormon problems. We were so hopeful it wouldn’t turn out this way. Maybe it still won’t. Maybe the highest profile excommunication court—that scheduled this Sunday in Virginia…

Black Masses Continue to Titillate Conservative Catholics

By Joseph Laycock

…klahoma City has been a leader for a string of short-lived Satanic groups including The Church of the IV Majesties and most recently Dakhma of Angra Mainyu. Since 2010, Daniels has been involved in organizing “black masses” or “Satanic exorcisms” at the Oklahoma City Civic Center three times. The most recent event had an audience of zero. Daniels does not appear to be a diabolic genius. The website for his current group presents a confusing mix of…

James Foley Prayed, But He Was Not a Martyr

By Alana Massey

…a destination for competitive martyrdom can do no one any good. In the absence of any evidence, we cannot know whether James Foley maintained his religious faith throughout the nightmarish ordeal. But one can hope that whatever sense he had that he was prayed for, that he was loved from afar, and that his spirit was present with them in absentia did stay with him—and that it remains with his loved ones today. In describing how he and a colleague p…

Satanic FOIA Reveals Deep Confusion About 1st Amendment

By Joseph Laycock

…s as an explicitly Christian nation. There was a palpable cognitive dissonance as constituents tried to formulate legal arguments that reconciled their ideas of America as both a Christian nation based on Mosaic law and a nation that guarantees religious freedom, which resulted in such statements as: Yes, people have a choice as to what they want to believe and yet we need to make that “choosing” as easy as possible to choose Jesus Christ as their…

Religion or Insanity? Two Upcoming Murder Trials Will Ask the (Burning) Question

By Joseph Laycock

…re attempting to kill herself. Christensen claimed she was responding to a phone call from her husband, a pastor, who announced that the world was ending and to get the family ready. Cases such as this raise questions that have long gone unanswered about how the state should define “religion.” By what criteria should we decide whether deviant beliefs and actions are an expression of religion or evidence of a medical problem? Dr. Kolchak points out…

The Environmental Politics of Vodou, New Orleans Style

By Joseph Laycock

…itical act. Glassman explained, “As a priestess, it’s my work to bring balance and healing and wholeness to the community.” The sociologist Emile Durkheim argued that the key difference between magic and religion is that magicians have clientele rather than a church. The Anba Dlo festival is an index that Vodou has begun to enter the American mainstream. With resources not available to many Vodou practitioners, advocates like Glassman can demonstr…

As Long As There’s Fear, We Aren’t Ready for Atheism: A Conversation with Theologian and Ex-Priest Daniel Maguire

By Alana Massey

…recognizing the poetic and ethical value of biblical stories in a more nuanced way than those scholars who offer only perfunctory nods to the Bible’s poetry, Maguire’s book offers a gentler welcome to atheism than its more dismissive predecessors. RD spoke with Maguire by phone about his latest book and the future of belief. What was the impetus for undertaking this after a long career as a priest and theologian who was once a believer? I started…

Ralph Reed’s Group Goes after “Union Thugs” in Wisconsin

By Sarah Posner

…join the fight with 100 plus FFC activists who will be going door-to-door encouraging the Badger State to vote for candidates who share our values of lower taxes, less government, faith, and who will stand up to union thugs who support Obama’s tax and spend solutions. We need your financial support to make our Wisconsin get-out-the-vote program work. Lower taxes, less government, faith. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Tim Phillips, preside…

Electionpocalypse, Part I (Christianity)

By Sarah Posner

…ama is an oppressor of Christianity, in the view of the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, who tweeted that “#Obamacare seems aimed squarely at dismantling and/or silencing the family and the Church.” Billy Graham (or, as many suspect, someone speaking on the 94-year-old evangelist’s behalf) put his name on an advertisement that reads, “I strongly urge you to vote for candidates who support the biblical definition of marriage between a man an…