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How Fitbit Helps a Conservative Evangelical College Monitor Students’ Bodies For Christ

By Jonathan Root

…t the “Aerobics Center,” students filled out a computer card with their ID number, activity number, and the time, intensity, and distance of their workout. The data derived from the cards helped to determine grades. One student who had been forced to enroll in the Pounds Off Program said, “I’m really sad for the school. It has so much potential, so many positive things about it, but you can’t treat people this way… They treat you like you’re not c…

Good News: Religious Outreach Works On Vaccine Hesitancy. Bad News: We Need It.

By Daniel Schultz

…message is given to them, which is at least somewhat reassuring. Still, according to PRRI, more than 4 in 10 Americans are hesitant or opposed to getting vaccinated. That number could and should be much lower, but we seem to have lost our collective way. Over 500,000 dead, and America can’t even agree on the simplest proposition: getting your shot is good for you, and good for the people around you. Full disclosure: I currently work for as a contr…

The Religious Right and the Tea Party on “Education Choice”

By Julie Ingersoll

…e open to anyone who wishes to attend, though there will be a limit on the number of schools (no more than ten in the next decade) and the number of students enrolled. Opponents see charter schools as quasi-privatized schools (and also fear that this is a first step toward further privatization). They see even these limited charter schools as a threat to funding for public education—especially in these difficult budget years where public education…

Pope Denounces Gender Colonization; Indonesian Court Considers Islamist Request To Criminalize Homosexuality; Egypt’s Grand Mufti Says No One Has Right to Harm Homosexuals; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ation in recent years. Under the heading “hate crimes” the organisation recorded five murders, 32 attacks and three suicides in Turkey last year. It believes the number of such murders over the past six years is more than 50. Syrian gay refugees in Turkey suffer even more, as their legal status is precarious – they are usually undocumented and most are reluctant to report assaults to police, our reporter says. The Turkish authorities cited “safegu…

PCUSA’s Nod to “Traditional” Marriage Understandable, but Not Accurate

By William E. Smith

…USA might adopt this rhetoric to affirm the position of its fairly sizable number of dissenting presbyteries, but is it really accurate? The word “tradition” tends to connote a sense of fixity and stability, an impression that “this is the way marriage always was,” leaving “gay marriage” to represent a sharp and dramatic historical rupture. Yet this way of thinking is only possible because of a certain historical amnesia. In fact, it would be far…

A Peek Inside the ‘Onion’ of Scientology

By Kristin Rawls

…as it is right now, then the Sea Organization is protected as a religious order, and what goes on within that order is not open to the same level of scrutiny. Courts are generally loath to take Scientology on because [the Church] has a messy legal history. They are notorious for spending tremendous amounts of money—not necessarily to win, but to fight. They tend to prevail because people eventually go, “Forget it. It’s too expensive. This ties u…

Evangelical Pastor Argues for Full LGBT Inclusion: “I Think It’s Inevitable”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…If you want to say what’s the higher way, or ideal way, you have to say according to Jesus and Paul, it’s celibacy. There’s a theological reason for that, because it’s all about the coming kingdom of God and in the resurrection there will be no marriage. If we really want to live according to the new creation, marriage is part of the old creation that’s passing away. Do you think marriage equality is inevitable for gay people? Yes, because America…

Naked Jihad

By Kate Blanchard

…n) who participate in it. If Tunisians and Ukrainians want to get naked in order to make a statement, more power to them. And if Pakistani or Parisian women want to tell these women off, so be it. Each of them will reap consequences, both predictable and unpredictable. None of us can control the effect our words, actions, and images have on other people, so we do the only thing we can do: we gather in communities of common understanding, around pe…

Scottish Episcopal Church Angers Conservative Anglicans With Embrace of Same-Sex Marriage; and more in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ls showing overwhelming public support. United Kingdom: Elections bring record number of gay MPs, Tory coalition with anti-gay DUP Voters in Britain’s parliamentary elections not only denied Theresa May’s Conservative Party a majority; they also elected 45 gay MP’s to the House of Commons, where they make up 7 percent of seats, which Pink News says is the world’s highest. Nineteen are Conservatives. May is drawing criticism for making an alliance…

The Internet Is Not Killing Religion, Religion is Killing Religion

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ew York, New Jersey, Delaware, and North and South Carolina exhibited extraordinary spiritual discord and sectarianism as well as a remarkable but all too familiar indifference to things spiritual. In America’s first European century, then, traditionally thought of as exclusively Puritan, Christian practice not only proved insecure but showed dangerous signs of declining rather than rising. Colonialism, against its own Christianizing designs was,…