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Almost-Blockbuster Netflix Series ‘The Family’ Exposes a Christian Network Whose God Is Power

By Peter Laarman

…was able to do. While always professing Christian ideals of selflessness, service, and fellowship they created a readily available platform for use by various dictators and haters and murderers of whatever stripe and whatever faith. This is quite an achievement, you have to admit. In an early sequence, Jeff Sharlet is vetted to join a kind of Christian frat house called Ivanwald, essentially a youth indoctrination center maintained by The Fellows…

Leaked Air Force Legal Opinion Approves Religious Expression

By Paul Rosenberg

…ers in practice never are.” Seidel cited a 2010 study finding a quarter of service members are nonreligious. “So, you’re talking about an audience full of nonreligious service members whose commanding officer is imposing religion on them in a way they can’t escape. That’s coercion,” he said. “It shouldn’t be happening.” MRFF plans a formal appeal “to the highest levels of the Department of Defense,” Weinstein said. “If we fail to receive timely an…

Discrimination on the Taxpayer’s Dime? The Fight To Curtail the Overreach of RFRA

By Sarah Posner

…y if the USCCB will not refer its clients for required reproductive health services, or if it arranged for access to these services through other means. About the ACLU’s FOIA suit, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families said the agency “is gathering documents to complete the requests in an expeditious manner that aligns with FOIA procedures.” The USCCB did not respond to requests for comment on the FOIA suit. For advocates of…

Pox Americana: Franzen’s Tragic Vision

By Peter Laarman

…religion, nothing about the business world, no ethnicity, and no military service. These subjects ripple right through Freedom, though not in un-ironic ways. If anything, for example, Walter is too Swedish and has too much technical and scientific expertise. Freedom is ostensibly about the Berglunds: Walter and Patty and their children Jessica and Joey. As in The Corrections, Franzen gives us a kind of salvation history about Midwesterners with t…

Republicans Lead the Way
on Repeal of “Don’t Ask
Don’t Tell”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…cked out under DADT. He called DADT a “cloud of fear” that gay and lesbian service members live under – a constant threat of being kicked out if their sexual orientation is revealed. People like Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (and a marine vet, btw), wants to keep that cloud of fear hovering over gay and lesbian service members. He claims ending DADT will violate the religious liberty of chaplains. ”Chaplains will be muzzl…

Healed of the Sin of Religion: At Church with Sara Miles

By Lisa Webster

…hey adore. And it’s funny, the desire of churches to make it into a social service program is so profound—like we have this idea that to be really professional you have to imitate the DMV or the post office, something like that. And in fact we’re not professional. Instead we get to participate in the gratuitous nature of creation, which is an amazing thing. And you try to organize it in a way that works well, which is what liturgy is. How do you e…

U.S. Bishops’ 15–year Battle For ‘Conscience’ and Against Contraception

By Patricia Miller

…e Act (DOMA) and a move by the DHHS to disqualify the USCCB from a refugee services contract (because it refused to provide the full range of sexual health services to women who had been victims of trafficking) the bishops charged the administration with waging an unprecedented war to “neuter religion” in the public square and declared that they would be forced to mobilize to fight. The fact is, however, that Catholic bishops have been waging a ne…

California Inmates Protest the Abuse of Long-Term Solitary Confinement

By Sarah Sentilles

…ful of control units across the country, according to the American Friends Service Committee. Today an estimated 44 states have supermax facilities, and “[as with the overall prison population, people of color are disproportionately represented in isolation units.” “In California, roughly 90 percent of the individuals in the Security Housing Units are people of color,” said Markle Downton. “For people of faith, for people of conscience, the dispro…

“I Speak to God in Public”: Are Young Black Millennials Reclaiming a Theology of Resistance?

By Joshua L. Lazard

…w York and Washington, D.C. Some of these organizations have continued the service in successive years. Duke Divinity School’s Office of Black Church Studies has officially sponsored the service titled “Seven Last Words: Strange Fruit Still Speaks” (a reference to the Billie Holiday song “Strange Fruit” about Jim Crow lynchings in the South), and it is now a staple of the programmatic calendar. These venues give opportunities for black millennials…

Ann Romney’s Big Night at the RNC

By Joanna Brooks

…s do: the acts of service performed for one another. Romney gave plenty of service as a lay pastoral leader for Boston-area congregations. But, as Ann Romney explained, “Mitt does not like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point.” (Tagg Romney made a similar point earlier in the day about how Mormons are taught not to brag about acts of interpersonal service. This is an important way…