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Ray Lewis Isn’t the Only One Bringing Religion to Super Bowl Sunday

By Joanna Brooks

…ll be pulling for the 49ers, but really, he is one of the “nones.” This Sunday, I vow I will not keep count of the number of times Ray Lewis preaches prosperity football gospel. (Cue the organ.) I will not cringe when he says, as he will, “no weapon formed shall prosper” (Isaiah 54: 17). Most importantly, and more seriously, I will not cast judgment on his conversion. I will keep the Diet Coke cold. I will keep the queso hot and bubbly. I will ca…

Evangelical Sexperiment

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…cheating spouse, as the alleged road to marital recovery. If this sounds almo*]}*st magical, and too good to be true, then it probably is. Reverend Young gestures to Genesis, oddly enough, as a way to make his case. There is no shame in marital sex, he says; “God thought it up, it was his idea.” These are theological howlers that simply cannot be allowed to pass. Adam and Eve weren’t married, for starters. And in Eden, there is no clear reference to t…

No Shocker for This Gay Ex-Jesuit, Vatican Rejects Gay Priests (Again)

By Benjamin Brenkert

…p doctrine with his name, did approve “The Gift of Priestly Vocation,” the most recent document by the Church’s Congregation for the Clergy. The use of the word “gift” in this document’s title suggests again that gay men, and consequently, all lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning men and women do not have gifts and cannot contribute to the spiritual life of their Church. Whether one considers the papacy of Saint John Paul II, Pope…

Tebow’s Tears: Is God Really a Gator Fan?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…topic. On Saturday, one of those rare sporting convergences took place, almo*]}*st on the order of a solar eclipse for sport. The two top-ranked college football teams met in their SEC Conference Championship game, and barring some sort of overtime scrim, the loser would drop out of contention for the National Title this year. There was no such scrim this year; Alabama won in convincing fashion, beating Florida by a final score of 32-13 (while they l…

Obama Foes Misrepresent Islam with “Apostate” Tactic

By Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im

…determine the behavior of Muslims everywhere, yet defenseless against the most fanciful, even outrageous, claims and charges. It may be helpful to first note that the subject can be confusing if we mix a general discussion of the crime of apostasy under traditional interpretations of Shari`a, or the incidence of prosecutions in some Muslim-majority countries (i.e. where Muslims are the majority of the population) today, with the specific claims D…

More Bleak Times For Indonesian LGBTs; South Africa Bans Extremist Anti-Gay US Pastor; Mexican Marriage Struggle Heats Up; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…and websites with LGBT content face a ban in Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, following a closed-door interagency summit held Wednesday at the country’s Ministry of Communications.” He reports, “The panel included representatives from the Ministry of Human Development, the National Police, and the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which was represented by a member of the country’s Muslim clerics association.” Critics worry this co…

Is Sport Worth Dying For? Lessons From the Vancouver Olympics

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…too fast, but about whether Olympic sports are too dangerous. To be sure, most modern sports at the Olympic level are decidedly dangerous; many of these high-speed winter events are wildly so. A cursory review of Greek athletic literature, from Archaic poetry and Classical prose to Pausanias, a famous second-century Roman traveler who wrote a long book entitled Guide to Greece (or better, A Greek Walkabout—it is still considered by many to be “th…

Queer [Theory]-Bashing by Georgia Republicans; The New Know-Nothingism Creeps

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…tors began calling for an investigation of colleges throughout the Georgia state system (27 four-year campuses in all), in order to weed out courses that should not be taught, and quite possibly, to downsize further by removing such instructors from the faculty rolls. Two areas were targeted initially when the story broke on February 10th; both involved—what else?—sex. One professor at the Georgia State University was listed as an expert on oral s…

Pox Americana: Franzen’s Tragic Vision

By Peter Laarman

…rooks berates Franzen for omitting “the serious parts of life”: “There’s almo*]}*st no religion. There’s very little about the world of work and enterprise. There’s an absence of ethnic heritage, military service, technical innovation, scientific research, or anything else potentially lofty and ennobling.” When I saw the Brooks column, I had to wonder whether he and I were even reading the same novel. I read Franzen’s opus as a large-themed morality t…

When Religion Goes Missing in the Modern Museum

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…I. A Museum Half-Full, Half-Empty On the week of the summer solstice, that most energized and sacred week in the pagan calendar, the Greek government opened a new national museum. The plans for the building, designed by Swiss-born architect Bernard Tschumi, were first revealed at the Venice Biennale in 2002. They have been completed in ambitious fashion. But the new museum is empty. Or rather, the new museum is not filled with the artifacts for wh…