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A Reforming Tradition Struggles With Change

By Brent Hege

…onal ministers, associates in ministry, and deaconesses, and currently the number of women and men preparing for ministry in ELCA seminaries is roughly equal (Susan Candea, “Wisdom Has Blessed Us”). While there are certainly some in the ELCA who continue to oppose women’s ordination, those numbers are small and grow smaller with each passing year. The same, I suspect, will be the case for the issue of gay and lesbian ordination forty years from no…

A Rationalist’s Ghost Story

By Gary Jansen

…mber of flashbacks from when I was a young boy). In addition, there were a number of things I didn’t get the chance to explore for a very practical reason: I had a deadline. Working in publishing I’m very conscious about how important deadlines are. Writers need to make those deadlines and because I worked in the industry I wanted to be respectful about that. There were a number of frightening episodes that my wife experienced that I didn’t have t…

The Episcopal Church ‘Takes a Flying Leap’ into Controversies Old and New

By Elizabeth Drescher

…specific.” “In sharing our stories,” said Partridge, who testified with a number of transgender Episcopalians and their advocates before the deputies and bishops, “we were really trying to be very specific” about the experiences of transgender people in the Church. This experience, he said, “is something that we really need to name at this time in the Church. We just believed this was important in reflecting not only our own lives but also the li…

Trump’s Pathological Devotion to Border Walls Isn’t Political, It’s Theological

By Alana Massey

…ted casualties go up, but we lost our collective minds when we watched the number of confirmed active shooters in Paris go up. The images coming out of Paris in the immediate term were of a city devoured by chaos and fear rather than the stillness of carnage, more terrifying for their uncertainty. There was a brief lull in the digital noise when an official government action was announced from France: the state of emergency declared by President F…

ABC’s Hit Sitcom Black-ish Does God, Pushes Theological Respectability

By Anthony B. Pinn

…gone unfulfilled. African Americans have a long history of encounter with injustice and just as substantial a history of probing what ongoing injustice says about theological claims. What can be said about God in light of moral evil (e.g., racism, sexism, classism, homophobia) in the world? Early African American work songs, for instance, suggest that some African Americans signified belief in God due to the misery of life. The blues, growing out…

Will Pope’s African Tour Change Attitudes on Divorce and LGBTQ Among African Catholics?

By Kaya Oakes

…a has gone through a startling increase in recent decades. Since 1980, the number of African Catholics has grown by 238%, in contrast to Europe, where it has grown by only 6%. Some of this may be attributable to higher fertility rates in African countries, but it also reflects the church’s success in missionary efforts. And where there are a decreasing number of vocations to the priesthood in Europe, where vocations have declined by 23%, African v…

Bill Gates’ Comments on Covid-19 Vaccine Enflame ‘Mark of the Beast’ Worries in Some Christian Circles

By Christopher James Blythe

…has played a role in funding. In the first scenario, the vaccine will be injected and tracked via quantum dot technology which, as one video explains, consists of “an invisible tattoo which is only visible through the use of this special smartphone camera app and filter.” In the second scenario, the vaccine would be tied to a second project funded in part by the Gates, ID2020, an international project aimed to provide digital IDs for individuals…

It’s Not Me, It’s You: Catholic Values Dumping Trump

By Patricia Miller

…Disgraced by the “Spotlight” scandals and packed off to Rome (where he is enjoying a cushy retirement). Cardinal Francis George? Deceased. Cardinal Timothy Dolan? Wised-up and politic enough to know that there’s no point in going against the Francis tide (although he couldn’t resist calling out pro-choice Catholics, claiming some kind of trademark on the word “Catholic”). Cardinal Raymond Burke? Cooling his heels in a ceremonial role after a humil…

What Color is Vatican Smoke?

By Marian Ronan

…s that the exclusion of women from Roman Catholic ordination really is an injustice, one directly linked to other injustices that do indeed result in thousands of women’s deaths. This truth is acknowledged briefly in a reference in Pink Smoke to the African deaths caused by the Church’s prohibition of condoms. In general, though, I guess ethically complex arguments just don’t have the same appeal as graphic, unnuanced comparisons. Maybe the smoke…

Special Report: Have Evangelical Colleges Succumbed to “Theological Paranoia”?

By Chrissy Stroop

…are losing the possibility of confiding in the kind of understanding and nonjudgmental professor that’s increasingly difficult to spot on evangelical campuses. Overbay, Wheeler, and Giberson are among a small group of former insiders willing and able to speak publicly about their experiences because they’ve moved on to more open environments and aren’t bound by non-disparagement agreements. The majority of people RD contacted wouldn’t (or couldn’t…