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Indonesia’s Anti-Porn Bill is Anti-Pluralism

By Fatemeh Fakhraie

…ated into criminalizing such styles, coming uncomfortably close to a dress code. Many of those against the bill are worried that it threatens national unity; though Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country, it has significant minorities from other religions who feel that this bill is pushing a definition of pornography under the guise of “Islamicizing” the entire nation or riding roughshod over Indonesia’s secular pluralism. There are…

Pat Robertson’s Women Warriors Leading Spiritual Warfare In Zimbabwe

By Sarah Posner

…ort published by the State Department, the government amended the criminal code in 2006, “broadening the definition of sodomy to include ‘any act involving physical contact between males that would be regarded by a reasonable person to be an indecent act,’” subjecting “offenders” to up to a one-year prison term and a $5,000 fine. Although there are no known prosecutions, societal discrimination has led to “corrective” rape of lesbians and forced m…

Conservative Christians Finally Get Serious About Divorce

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…imself and his family. At least in those days, the Southern Baptists had a code about divorce, but these days, Southern Baptist churches are routinely led by divorced men—the most famous being Charles Stanley. Despite divorcing his wife in 2000, he remains the pastor at the mega-sized First Baptist Church in Atlanta. Divorce has been a growing problem for the faithful. A Barna poll from 2008 revealed 33 percent of couples overall get divorced. Bor…

The (Mostly Catholic) Anti-Abortion Roe v. Wade Schlep

By Mary E. Hunt

…l was also a good way to “house” a lot of people without running into fire code violations. I could not find any other religious events advertised. Could it be that people of other faiths simply held private devotions? Perhaps, but more likely the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and their friends were the major sponsors of the whole weekend but just wanted it to appear more broadly based. The Poli…

Common Ground: Winning the Battle, Losing the Culture War

By Chip Berlet

…t attempts by Inside the Beltway players to transform it into a re-branded code for backsliding Democrats. Compromise implies both sides give up something. It is never a good idea to start out a negotiation by giving the other side everything they want at the beginning. The Christian Right wants “abortion reduction” because they want to deny women the right to choose abortion as an option when they become pregnant. The goal of groups such as the T…

Gimme That Old Spice Religion

By Frederick Clarkson

…ng a long unlit cigar, and inexplicably accompanied by two armed Sudanese “freedom fighters” in military garb. “The photo was taken,” Jennifer writes, “in the upper Nile. My husband, cool as a cucumber in the 120-degree heat, demonstrates that it is possible to be well-dressed even in the far reaches of Africa.” RD contributor Kathryn Joyce, author of the forthcoming Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement (Beacon Press, March 2009),…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…a community everyone can enjoy and which also enables people to express different opinions,” said a YouTube spokesperson at the time. “This can be a challenge because what’s okay in one country can be offensive elsewhere.” International human rights treaties guarantee all citizens freedom of thought and freedom of expression. But these treaties are binding on states, not on the media corporations that enable the exercise of such freedoms. It rema…

Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

By Scott Blaine Swenson

…can destroy families, poison politics and move many to violence. Perhaps a better course is listening to the faith speaking to us each in our own hearts, calling us to reach for our better selves, rather than internalizing someone else’s fear and the narrow interpretation of scripture they use to justify hate and violence. And while the coincidence of being born under the “Sign of the Beast” in Topeka 666 is still a little unnerving, there are dif…

Does “Religious Freedom” Deserve Scare Quotes?

By Sunnivie Brydum

…the very least, the clearly coordinated and targeted effort to rebrand the freedom to discriminate as “religious freedom” meets the Oxford English Dictionary’s criteria for the use of scare quotes (emphasis mine): Quotation marks used around a word or phrase when they are not required, thereby eliciting attention or doubts. Increased attention and elevated skepticism are precisely what is required of claims that suggest “religious freedom” cannot…

Roy “10 Commandments” Moore Doesn’t Want to Reform the Senate, He Has a Higher Calling

By Sunnivie Brydum

…l from Alabama’s Supreme Court—twice. While there is a clear hierarchy and code of judicial ethics for state and federal judges, no such restrictions are placed on Senators. It’s exceedingly rare (though not unheard of) for a Senator to be removed from office by colleagues for some kind of ethical or procedural breach. This reality only adds to the motivation for Moore to stick with the schtick that got him elected, and which demonstrably appeals…