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Why We Must Reclaim “Religious Freedom” from Christian Conservatives

By Bill Berkowitz

…used the third party principle to try to allow conservative Christian business owners to deny service to married same-sex couples, or those intending to be married. The argument (which is disturbingly similar to arguments against recognition of interracial marriage and relationships in the last century) is that a business discriminating against same-sex couples is exercising a reasonable extension of their religious opposition to marriage equalit…

A Reforming Tradition Struggles With Change

By Brent Hege

…tion. Almost one year later, we can take a step back to consider what happened in Minneapolis and to map some of the trajectories of this historic vote. A Fundamental Injustice? Discussions of sexuality, ordination practices, and related issues have been a regular feature of the the church’s conversations since before the merger of its predecessor bodies in 1988. Numerous studies have been conducted to determine how the ELCA might faithfully minis…

A Rationalist’s Ghost Story

By Gary Jansen

…happen on a regular basis. And it only happened while I was in the room alone. It never happened when my wife was with me or when my son was with me or if the three of us were in the room together. That was the first indication that something strange was going on in our house. Now, I’d always considered myself a rationalist, but over the next twelve months a series of odd events would challenge the way I viewed the world. It was an extraordinary t…

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

By Elizabeth Drescher

…the Church’s canons, if it determines such revision is necessary, for the next General Convention, to be held in Salt Lake City in 2015. To be sure, though actions related to sexuality and gender identity garner far more attention within and outside the Church, a revision to canons on sacramental theology and practice of a Church formed out of the Reformation tradition (a tradition noted for its refusal of the seven sacraments of the Roman Cathol…

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

By Alana Massey

…erased centuries of unresolved intercontinental grievances, because everyone knew that. But what I did not know until it happened to me is that we are all susceptible to the contagion of our own country’s particular policies and dominant discourses about borders. I had grown up walking easily in and out of Mexico along the pedestrian corridors of the San Ysidro Port of Entry. Watching my country erect fences against so generous and faultless a ne…

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

By Anthony B. Pinn

…n literature, grounded in places like Harlem, that gave us figures such as Nella Larsen (Quicksand), Lorraine Hansberry (“A Raisin in the Sun”), and Richard Wright (Black Boy). These and others like them turned away from the supernatural and grounded the struggle for justice and the expression of life in human effort within the confines of human history. Some, as Dre’s character demonstrates, fear that loss of belief will mean a loss of morality a…

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

By Kaya Oakes

…rch short on vocations and deeply divided on social issues to do both. The number of Catholics in Africa 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 decr…

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

By Christopher James Blythe

…nvisible 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 living throughout the world. This program will allegedly, albeit inaccurately, lead to microchipping. In other words, the vaccine is not the Mark of the Beast itself but…

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

By Patricia Miller

…ocial, and economic justice at the center of the 2016 campaign”; to VP nominee Tim Kaine talking about how his Catholic faith “became something vital” and the “north star for orienting my life” which led him toward a “battle for social justice”; the convention demonstrated faith in action. Unlike the Republican Party, which tends to see “faith” as a static concept like “patriotism” that’s either performed correctly or it isn’t, the Democratic Part…

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…