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Warships, Animals, Pubs Eligible For Blessings From Church of England, But Not Same-Sex Couples; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…mp administration’s relationships with Russian officials continued to make news, the Russian Orthodox Church praised Trump’s anti-abortion moves. The church statement cited its agreement with US-based Brian Brown, head of the World Congress of Families and International Organization for the Family. Brown recently traveled through Russia and several European countries while promoting the IOF’s Declaration on the Family and Marriage. In an email to…

New Atheism Produces Another Curiously Uncurious Science v. Religion Book

By Michael Schulson

…al drama. A football coach who taught physics, not biology, Scopes was no crusading evolutionist. Darrow and Bryan were only too happy to burnish their public reputations. The trial was the nation’s first to be broadcast by radio, and it turned into a major media event. The narrative that emerged—principally, of Northern urbanites versus rural Southerners—had obvious links to historical grievances and social power. It also helped shape the modern…

Gay Men Detained and Killed in Chechnya, and More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…at has become a symbol of the LGBT movement worldwide, died on March 31 in New York City. March 31 was also International Transgender Day of Visibility. The international anti-trans bus tour and media campaign being backed by CitizenGo and the International Organization for the Family continued to draw protests in the U.S. More than 300 people from 35 countries attended a conference last week on bolstering LGBT political engagement in Latin Americ…

Alex Jones, Performance Artist, and the Duelling Meanings of ‘Sincerity’ in Politics and Public Life

By Spencer Dew

…e can, certainly, perform at all hours—witness, as a famous for instance, Trump’s tweets, and the timestamps thereof. Yet such tweets exemplify another—the Right’s—understanding of sincerity, the “heroic risk” of declaring “a position, in an inherently unfixed world,” as Devji puts it: Such decisions acquire an important sacrificial character. Sincere commitment to a position, after all, inevitably exposes one to scorn if not attack. Often, these…

Using the “A” Word: Israel and Apartheid

By Shalom Goldman

…s: “A nineteen-year-old Barack Obama gave his first political speech in February 1981, urging the trustees of Occidental College in Los Angeles to divest from South Africa.” The most newsworthy of the book’s findings is the claim that in March of 1975 the “Israeli defense officials offered to sell South Africa some of the nuclear-capable Jericho missiles in its arsenal.” That specific deal never went through, but it “was only the beginning of Isra…

Pastor Rob Bell Catches Hell From Conservatives

By Eric Reitan

…not become fanaticism, however, until it is paired with arrogance: the refusal to recognize that their beliefs about God’s word could be wrong. The fanatic treats a challenge to their own beliefs as if it were a challenge to the word of God. Fanatics in this sense needn’t be violent, nor do they necessarily express the kind of hateful “God hate fags” vitriol spewing from such people as Fred Phelps. But there is, in fanaticism, a dangerous combina…

The White Nationalist Fantasy of Ancient Christian-Muslim Conflict Would Get an ‘F’ in History Class

By Tony Keddie

…clash of civilizations with the Muslim East. There are references to the Crusades, of course, but also to lesser known skirmishes between European Christians and Muslims such as Charles Martel’s campaign at the Battle of Tours (France) in 732. A power-hungry duke, Martel won a minor victory over Arabs who sought, at the urging of the Spanish Christian Duke Eudo of Aquitaine, to reclaim land Charles’s uncle seized from them. Tours was, in fact, a…

‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon, and 1/6

By Catherine Wessinger

…n other failed prophecies have reacted. Some have given up their faith in Trump. Trump has rationalized the readily apparent loss of the election by promoting the view that he really did win but the election was stolen. Some have set later dates for Trump to become president. Sovereign Citizens, for example, provided March 4, 2021, the date originally stipulated by the Constitution for a presidential inauguration, as when he would be sworn in as p…

What Will Orthodox ‘Republicanity’ Look Like?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ered took the form of a rhetorical question: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Nothing at all, he concluded. This is an even pithier way of expressing the know-nothingism he deemed essential to Christian faith. Jerusalem was the city, not just of prophecy, but of the paradigmatically impossible and unbelievable event: God’s son dying as a sacrifice for the rest of the world. And Athens? Nothing more than an aging university town seduced by i…

Election Day: Hope, Heartbreak, Naiveté, and Studs Terkel

By The Editors

…on. But what about us? Are we going to hear Colin Powell’s call? Today the New York Times reports that Elizabeth Dole has been (spuriously) accusing her opponent of atheism in a spate of attack ads, as if that instantly disqualifies one for the United States Senate. Do we, as they do in the land of our enemies, have any place left in ourselves for shame? Nick Street: A Beatnik Ode to 2008 Crypto-Muslim Arab terrorist-lover takes on tortured sept…