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Holy Father, You’re Not Helping: The Problem with the Pope’s Plan to Consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

By Katherine Kelaidis

…octrine of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was free from Original Sin, is not a doctrine shared between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. In fact, it’s only been an official part of Catholic teaching since 1854. While the Eastern churches agree with Catholics that Mary was free from personal sin, the fact that the Eastern church has never accepted Augustine’s teaching on Original Sin means that the doctrine is superfl…

How the Politics of the 1890s Explain the GOP’s Health Care Woes

By Patricia Miller

…Democrats opposed tariffs both as an imposition on the functioning of the free market and as a way to starve the federal government of revenue so it couldn’t do things like expand infrastructure. Throughout much of the 1880s, the Democrats used a series of procedural maneuvers to hamstring Congress, delaying progress on reforms the country needed in order to keep pace with the industrial revolution and the increasing urbanization and interconnect…

“Pregnancy is Not a Disease”: Birth of an Anti-Contraception Rallying Cry

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…notion that pregnancy is not an illness draws, I daresay uneasily, from a number of sources. There’s the classical notion that a thing’s nature is derived from its purpose, and the purpose of female bodies is to bear children. There’s the persistent early modern fear that women, especially privileged white women, are becoming overcivilized and unnatural, not having as many privileged white babies, relying on technology and pain relief, and not fi…

Turn On The News: This Isn’t a Split, It’s a Tiny Sliver of Conservatives Walking Out the Door — Introducing A New Media Criticism Column

By Daniel Schultz

…If I can get comfortable with the idea that religion shouldn’t be given a free pass, reporters can surely get there. Which brings us, unfortunately, back to Kathryn Post’s piece. I’m afraid it doesn’t pass many of the tests laid out above. The trouble starts immediately, with the headline: “Reformed Church in America splits as conservative churches form new denomination.” The first two paragraphs then inform us that 43 out of 1,000 congregations…

This Year in Satanism

By Joseph Laycock

…o groups. SEPTEMBER September was a busy month. The Satanic Temple filed a Freedom of Information Act request and obtained a file of communications from citizens regarding their plan to erect a Baphomet statue on the grounds of the Oklahoma capital. Sadly, almost none of the angry writers or callers seemed to understand that the issue at stake was the establishment clause and whether any religious group should be able to have monuments on capital…

Jesus Christ and Super Stars: How The Holy Rolled Mainstream in Pop Music

By Alana Massey

…mediating theological conversations. This has given artists and audiences free rein to reach more deeply into their Christian heritages and memories to grapple with holy mysteries that were once closely managed by the church. The resulting shift means that artists are more likely to resist the concept of grace than the concept of sin: their defiance of the holy is not in the tone of repentant fear so much as a kind of performative dismissal of th…

Evangelicals Call Christian Zionist Uncritical “Support” for Israel “Appalling” and “Intolerable”

By Sarah Posner

…m, is a dangerous insult.” As I was writing this, an email from Christians United for Israel (representing a big chunk of Gushee and Stassen’s target audience) arrived in my inbox, urging followers to “stand with” Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who will be “entering a lion’s den” at the United Nations. “We want him to stand proudly knowing that millions of Christians stand with him. We want him to feel our hands holding up his arms. We…

LGBT’s, Opponents Prep for Vatican Synod; UN Rights Council Adopts LGBT Resolution; Brazil’s Evangelicals Eye Presidency; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms,” it said. You can download the text of the resolution. Free and Equal, the UN Campaign for LGBT Equality, released a video made during the September opening of the UN General Assembly. The UN Human Rights Office and members of the Core Group on LGBT Rights at the UN set up a photo booth and invited visitors – including chiefs of state and diplomats — to have their…

Record Numbers Voted for More Death and More Racism; Can We Really Just Come Together as a Nation?

By Peter Laarman

…this time—after all of the atrocious and dangerous behavior—a significant number would turn away and vote for a return to conventional presidential leadership. Where are these defectors? As I write this, election boards around the country have already counted the votes of over 67 million people who want more death, more deception, and more openly racist and exclusionary public policies. And a huge number of these voters identify as Christian. And…

Why The Book of Mormon (the Musical) is Awesomely Lame

By Jared Farmer

…ggerated statistic that counts all baptisms and births, but not the actual number of churchgoers), representatives of the religion—and representations of it—have managed to become fixtures in popular culture. I don’t have a complete explanation for this, but I would point first to the post-9/11 zeitgeist. In the last decade, there was a national and global debate about the place of religion in politics. Many looked to the American past to better u…