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Snake-Handlers, False Messiahs, and a Few Great Souls: 14 Who Died in 2014

By Daniel Silliman

No other end-of-year list can hope to offer such profound juxtapositions: a groundbreaking female Mennonite pastor alongside an “immortalist”; the transcendent wisdom of a civil rights leader alongside one of the most hate-filled religious figures in contemporary memory. But here it is, a connect-the-dots portrait of a powerfully complicated American religious landscape, circa 2014. Vincent Gordon Harding Historian and theologian Vincent Gordon H…

Sacred Real Estate: What Makes Washington’s WWII Memorial So Dreadful?

By Michael A. Elliott

…the first time, through the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington. Dedicated in 2004, the Memorial is a broad plaza of fountains, pillars, and sculpted wreaths. It also sits in the shadow of the Washington Monument, in a direct axis with the Lincoln Memorial. It’s hard to imagine more symbolic real estate. How this monumental configuration came to be is the subject of Kirk Savage’s brilliant new book, Monument Wars. Equal parts…

Pride Month & Prejudice; ‘Worrisome Time’ For LGBT People; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ciety,” he said. CNN traces the start of the backlash to early 2016 when a number of political leaders began making “unprompted attacks on Indonesia’s LGBT community.” It notes that conservative Islam is a growing political force, evident in the arrest and conviction of Jakarta’s Christian governor on blasphemy charges. The report says human rights activists have been disappointed by President Joko Widodo’s “lackluster” defense of LGBT people. Sal…

Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…

Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

By Vyckie Garrison

…ve years—not a “buffet-style,” live-and-let-live Christ follower, but a hardcore fundamentalist true believer. I was “radically pro-life” to the point of shunning all forms of birth control. I desired to raise “a quiver full of arrows” for God’s army: mighty warriors who would valiantly battle the forces of darkness, battering against the Gates of Hell and ultimately ushering in Christ’s Kingdom on Earth. I homeschooled my seven children to ensure…

Modernity’s Fraternity: What Dan Brown Gets Right

By Samuel Biagetti

…t there is a secret Masonic pyramid containing ancient wisdom somewhere in Washington, DC, and then compels Langdon to find it for him. All the while, we learn, the villain intends to kill Solomon’s scientist-sister and to destroy the lab where she is exploring the hidden powers of the human mind. The busy plot provides plenty of opportunity for putting Masonic rituals and secrets on display. They begin right on the first page, when we are introdu…

Swiss Priest Sacked for Blessing Lesbian Couple; Mormon Equality Advocate Excommunicated; Pope-Backed Anti-Gay Referendum Fails; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…s parenthood. Nepal: Government committee recommends marriage equality The Washington Blade reports, “Nepal could become the first Asian country to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples if its government accepts the recommendations of a committee that studied the issue.” A translated copy of the recommendations the Washington Blade obtained from gay Nepalese Parliamentarian Sunil Babu Pant, who founded the Blue Diamond Society, the country’s…

Discovering “Little Syria”—New York’s Long-Lost Arab Neighborhood

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…that also included the much-more-famous Kahlil Gibran. For Fine, the Save Washington Street project is part of the same effort. “We are persistent,” he told me by phone, “because these stories have a real impact on people.” Telling stories grounded in real Arab-American history is the only way to reach understanding. And understanding is still sorely needed. One imagines what the Islamophobic activists who conjured the “Ground Zero Mosque” debacl…

An American Muslim Abroad, Or, Things I Saw in Dubai

By Haroon Moghul

…h buildings, starting right around the same time. Talk about luxury on the cheap; it’s hard to deny a feeling of similarity. (The tower is to the Burj as a certain toupee is to hair: might the Trump Tower inadvertently mimic an Islamic motif?) The regal twin palm trees in the foreground are the world’s tallest, at some 3,500 feet each. Recently a falling coconut crushed an entire apartment complex, punching a massive hole that has filled up with…

Too Hot for Shul: Rabbis Seek Healthy Israel Dialogue After Gaza

By Sarah Posner

…llennial congregation at the historic Sixth and I Synagogue in Washington, DC’s Chinatown. She said she urged her friend to meet again and again with her rabbi “until you can figure out how you can have a conversation.” “We need to have these conversations,” said Stutman, “and I still think synagogues are the best place for them.” Co-sponsored by J Street, the school’s J Street U chapter, and the New Israel Fund, the event was titled “Test of the…