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Senate Candidate Todd Akin’s Anti-Abortion Acquaintances from the Late ’80s

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…point became a leader in the American Coalition of Life Activists, a group most known for its role in creating and compiling the so-called “Nuremberg Files”: online dossiers on abortion providers and abortion supporters including their work addresses, photos, and places of worship. There was a trial, and Dreste himself was fined millions in damages, according to a 1999 investigative piece on Dreste by the St. Louis Riverfront Times: The defendants…

Baptist Resolutions Signal More Culture War

By Paul Harvey

…rtly before retiring, he referred to the 2012 presidential election as the most important one since 1860—yes, the most important since the one that brought on the Civil War. Since then, the convention elected its first black President (Fred Luter, a pastor in New Orleans), replaced Land, and has gone through its own internal theological controversies between neo-Calvinists and those who take a more broadly evangelical view of the ken of salvation….

Exactly 30 Years Before Illinois AG’s Devastating Sexual Abuse Report, a Plan for Prevention was Implemented, Then Scrapped

By David Clohessy

…rty years ago, a cataclysm turned a tiny midwestern diocese upside down. Almo*]}*st no one seems to recall an unprecedented eruption that claimed nearly ten percent of the clerics in this diocese in less than two years. It started with Rev. Jerome Ratterman. Two weeks later, it was Rev. James Calhoun and Rev. Robert Vonnahmen, and after one more week, it was Rev. David Crook. Again, this was just in the first month. The next month, it was Rev. Robert…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…e things.” But publicity has been a mixed bag. Mr. Mushtaq said that while most of the feedback he received had been positive, he also got text messages calling him “an ugly, dirty Muslim” and a “terrorist.” He has also met fellow leather folk who think “that being Muslim is the antithesis of being progressive,” he said. Although he calls himself a Muslim (he studied Arabic and the Quran as a child), Mr. Mushtaq says his relationship to Islam toda…

Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…ths, demons, angels, gods, goddesses, priests, corporate logos, and more—almo*]}*st anything imaginable is cobbled together in an incredible display of bricolage. This decadent ritualism, which can be both sincere and satirical, casts the festival as a semi-religious cultural happening. Furthermore, many participants describe Burning Man as a “spiritual” experience, but deny that it constitutes a new religious movement as such. Organizers too explici…

Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

By Vyckie Garrison

…it was appropriate to take my daughter and seven other youth group members—mostly disadvantaged, mostly Hispanic kids between the ages of 10 and 19—to see such a partisan film as part of their Bible study discussion on “justice.” When Chassé had first seen it, she had returned home from Teen Night with a barrage of accusations against President Obama, the candidate she had been planning to vote for this November. “Is it true that Obama’s trying to…

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

By Haroon Moghul

…grown from a small trading port to a world-class, global city, one of the most dynamic and diverse metropolises in the world. While we make much of the rise of China and Turkey, for example, consider that these are societies with long histories, including great stretches as dominant regional or global powers. Dubai, on the other hand, has come up from out of nowhere and accelerated past much of the Middle East. Of course the city is frequently de…

What Will Orthodox ‘Republicanity’ Look Like?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…religious faith. It was elegant in its simplicity: first, insist that the most convincing argument hinges on something unbelievable—then there is quite literally nothing left to argue about. In short, Tertullian insisted that the true Christian (of whom he believed there were precious few) must prove his or her bona fides by believing what is literally unbelievable. As Laderman suggests, we may be witnessing today what a politics of Republicanity…

Religious Affiliation, ‘Mankind’: India’s Anti-Corruption Activist Leads Second Freedom Struggle

By April L. Bogle

…er for an hour, I’d brought a long list of questions. I jumped in with the most important first—what makes Kiran Bedi who she is? “Mankind is My Religion” At age 20, Bedi was sailing through the Police Service entrance exam until a question about her religious affiliation made her stop and think. “It was a deciding point in my life,” she said, recalling the moment and sitting up tall on the ottoman. “I wrote, ‘Mankind.’” She says an officer grille…

What the Lost Finale is Really About

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…ce to decipher the clues and step on to the island themselves. Lost is a postmodern pastiche of world religions, a mash-up of myths—which doesn’t make it any less significant to its receivers. Myths are always mash-ups. The audience of Lost moves from a state of disbelief and objectivity into a realm of complicity. In a recent New York Times interview, co-writer Damon Lindelhof suggests, One of the things that we completely own is that in many way…