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Feisal Abdul-Rauf Still not Providing Leadership on Park51

By Hussein Rashid

…antly calls the center Cordoba House, the same day Park51 revamped its Web site, and one of principals says he wants to sell. Apparently no one told him that in his absence the Cordoba House name was dropped in favor of Park51. Either he is being kept out of the information loop or there is a leadership struggle happening within the team. The only other alternative is that he really is just clueless, as his wife constantly referred to the project…

To Pray or to Prey: Racism, Religion and Violence in Charleston

By Willie Dwayne Francois

…a recent college graduate, grandparents, mothers, friends and clergy. The site of this white terrorist attack intimates a broader attack on the idea of black freedom. Emanuel Church embodies a storied and triumphant history in the American south. Historically, this place of transformative faith invested capital and bodies in the work of black emancipation. We must remember that Denmark Vesey was a founder of Emanuel: there is a legacy of unfounde…

In a Disturbing Trend, Far-Right Candidates are Getting Crucial Support from Militia Groups and Churches

By Chrissy Stroop

…the company $5000 for “consulting services” and who’s been praised by the site’s overtly anti-Jewish CEO, Andrew Torba. The Tree of Life Synagogue shooter was, not coincidentally, a Gab user. Under pressure, Mastriano eventually cut ties with Gab, but as a Christian nationalist gubernatorial candidate, he remains a threat to democracy. The point in adducing these examples and tracing their connections is not that most individual evangelical churc…

Jesus Loves You, But You’ll Burn in Hell

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…he Muslim my niece dated for awhile—refusing to stay with them when they visited, lest he be seen as endorsing the relationship—my sister took a different tack. She was very kind to her daughter’s boyfriend, staying in their home and participating in their lives. “How will he come to know Jesus if no one will share it with him?” was my sister’s logic. By being friendly, she was certain, at some point, her daughter’s boyfriend would come around and…

Before Oprah, There Was the “Hour of Power”: Crystal Cathedral Pastor Robert H. Schuller Has Died

By Cathleen Falsani

…its snack bar,” according to Schuller’s biography on the Hour of Power website. “One hundred persons attended that first Sunday, all in their cars. Dr. Schuller, who believe[d] this outdoor ministry experience helped inspire him to later build the all-glass Crystal Cathedral, often state[d], ‘It was there I fell in love with the sky!’” Interior of the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif, 2005. Image via Wiki Commons. Schuller’s congregation…

Angels & Demons: America’s Preeminent Pop Theologian Takes on Religion and Science

By Nathan Schneider

…cience and religion as the same thing,” he says in an interview on his Web site. “Both are manifestations of man’s quest to understand the divine.” If both are left free to operate, free from intellectual arrogance and dogma, they will spiral into mutual completion. Not even harmony in separate-but-equal spheres. No, they’ll correct each other, benefit each other, and we’ll all be the better for it. This kind of thinking has a history. It’s little…

Shariah-Approved Sex Aids, Abstinence-Only Goes to China, and Abercrombie Hijab…

By Michael J. Altman

…nwhile, federal investigators have ruled that a fire at a the construction site of an Islamic center in Murfreesborough, Tennessee was an arson. Elsewhere in the state, a Memphis pastor put a “Welcome to the Neighborhood” sign outside his church to welcome the new Islamic center being built nearby. And a new mosque has gone up in Lousiville, Kentucky quite peacefully. Is the BBC anti-Christian? The Florida pastor who had planned to burn Qur’ans on…

Has Sojourners Really Changed its Policy on
Gay Ads?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…rom the group Believe Out Loud, which wanted to place a video on their web site encouraging churches to open their doors, hearts, and minds to LGBT people. The ad that the magazine has accepted is a full page ad for the print magazine, and the only difference is the focus — but it is a difference that, well, makes a really big difference. The ad, sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Ali Forney Center focuses on th…

Merry Kitzmas! Marking An Evolutionary Victory

By Lauri Lebo

…the latest anti-evolution attack. The battle is now back in Louisiana, the site of Dover’s precursor of Edwards v. Aguillard, in which creation science was struck down as religion in 1987. The strategy is now focused on “teaching the controversy.” Instead of actually claiming that they have a scientific claim, they now just try to instill doubt in students’ minds about the validity of evolutionary theory. Earlier this month, creationists led by th…

Does Violence Always Win?: Learning From René Girard (1923-2015)

By Martha J. Reineke

…im as the passive instrument of its own transformation. Law also marks the site of sacrifice. Other markers typically are suppressed; thus, the only remaining testimony to culture-creating violence is contamination and pollution that seep out of the Law. For over three decades, scholars of religion have drawn on Girard to inform their work. Christian theologians and New Testament scholars have found Girard’s insights on the scapegoat mechanism of…