Search for "bbc news cleantalkorg2.ru bbc news news word news usa Breaking News Live Updates Politics World News The New York Times"

‘Leaving is Never So Simple as Stepping Over a Line’ — A Conversation with the Author of ‘Rift,’ a New Memoir on Christian Patriarchy

By Audrey Clare Farley

…ccident that most people within the homeschooling and Christian patriarchy world were White. White people were seen as more civilized, with access to true religion. Another variant of the rape myth has it that contracepting women are eminently rape-able. In Quiverfull and “Trad” Catholic circles, for instance, girls are commonly told that birth control renders women sexual objects. Only the procreative are truly respected. You grew up with these m…

Image of Hubert Aiwanger, Bavaria's deputy premier speaking at a podium.

Holocaust Humor and The ‘Real’ Germany — As Top Officials Shatter Post-WWII Taboos, German Conservatives Follow GOP Playbook and Charge Ahead

By Annika Brockschmidt

…an antisemite, I have never been a misanthrope. I was frightened by the accusations.” That the accusations—not their content—frightened Aiwanger, was telling, and a foreshadowing of the victim narrative he would pivot to only moments later. Aiwanger admits to nothing—a classic non-apology: “I can’t remember showing a Hitler salute, rehearsing Hitler speeches in front of the mirror.” One would think that someone who had never rehearsed Hitler speec…

Liberty University’s In-House Conversion ‘Therapist’ Retires, But Will the Christian School Cease This Discredited Practice?

By Lucas Wilson

…e queer Liberty alumni will continue to draw attention to the bigotry that runs rampant at the world’s largest fundamentalist university. Liberty and Emerick had their opportunity to try to change our sexual orientations, but it ought to be known that today many of us are thoroughly, delightedly, and proudly queer. Indeed, despite how Liberty sought and continues to seek the erasure of queer life on (and off) campus, it is we queers who will have…

How a Group of Catholic Pacifists Took on the Nuclear State

By Eric C. Miller

…ention in more subtle ways. Whether direct or indirect, these instances of rule-breaking all function as performances of identity for the activists, through which they instantiate the roles of prophet and martyr. Thanks in large part to the activists’ own legal savvy, the courtroom itself becomes a religiously fruitful space even though, contrary to what one might reasonably expect, Plowshares trials often proceed without much explicitly religious…

Lesbian Nuns: Still Immodest After All These Years

By Susan Henking

…k about Renaissance Italy called Immodest Acts. It was reviewed in the New York Times, The Nation, and the San Francisco Chronicle, not to mention many scholarly venues. Why? Perhaps because the subtitle of the book was The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. The notion of the lesbian nun was not a new one. Denis Diderot’s 18th-century anti-Catholic piece entitled La Religieuse (The Nun) certainly portrayed what we might see as lesbian act…

Why the King Hearings Should Matter to Mormons

By Joanna Brooks

…ng hearings: The Smoot hearings had some basis in fact: the LDS Church was breaking the law against polygamy. The merits of that law, of course, are questionable, but there’s no question that the Saints were breaking it. Though Smoot himself was not a lawbreaker, he was indeed in the leadership of an institution that was. In contrast, the King hearing seems to be the rankest kind of political hay-making, fear-mongering bigotry that lacks any basis…

Spiritual Envy: Michael Krasny’s Agnostic Quest

By Lisa Webster

…rs to pass and for something to happen that is unforeseen. Even though sometimes, like Beckett also said, habit is the great deadener. I think Augustine said that habit was the gateway drug to sin. And sin, or what we think of as sin, can come out of that feeling of restlessness and boredom that can be almost cosmically overwhelming. It can also be terribly paralyzing of course. There’s a play by Caryl Churchill where she writes about this Buddhis…

Making Muffins and Troops for Spiritual Warfare: The Godly Women of Instagram

By Aimee Chor

…urprising; the nexus of whiteness and masculinity features prominently in Trump’s base. The women among Trump’s supporters appear attired in patriotic gear much like the men’s. Their star-spangled baseball caps might be covered in bling, but these women generally don’t perform overtly traditional femininity. However, the God-and-guns Christian right, with its aggressions and resentments, depends not only on symbols of traditional masculinity, but…

How Mario Cuomo Made the World Safe for Pro-Choice Catholics

By Patricia Miller

…ter Mondale, conservative elements of the Catholic hierarchy, most notably New York Archbishop John O’Connor, started to push back against attempts by Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin to remove abortion as a point of leverage with Catholics for the Republican Party. Bernardin famously asserted that Catholics should consider all “life” issues—abortion, nuclear war, poverty—when considering which candidate to vote for. But at a news conference in J…

Orthodox Jews Begin to Reckon with Sexual Abuse

By Paul Berger

…e investigations. According to law enforcement officials in New Jersey and New York, more Orthodox abuse victims are coming forward than ever before. But perhaps more importantly, sexual abuse itself, once taboo, has become an increasingly talked about issue within the Orthodox world. Just a couple of months ago, two of the country’s largest and most influential Orthodox organizations, the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union, co-s…