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US Names Int’l Envoy for LGBT Rights; Marriage revolution spreads in Mexico; Scott Lively Warns World of Anti-Christ; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…on the first judgment in Oaxaca,” Méndez marveled during a phone interview last week. “In the two years [since], we have succeeded in covering almost the entire country. Even some LGBT rights supporters are a little mystified that marriage equality rulings haven’t sparked a national backlash. The fight over Mexico City’s 2009 marriage equality law brought strong opposition from the country’s Catholic hierarchy. Yet while some state bishops have co…

“Americans Hate Muslims, Too” (And Other Impediments to U.S. Advocacy for Religious Freedom Abroad)

By Chad Bauman

…aside and quietly told us that he had detected our American accents on the phone, and had given us the room instead of others because “Americans hate Muslims, too.” Still today, when I travel in India, Hindus presupposing my agreement frequently make off-handed and derogatory comments about their Muslim neighbors. For those concerned about the effectiveness of the United States’ advocacy for religious freedom around the world, the perception that…

Dispatches From the Beltway: Horton Hears Progressive Religion

By Robert P. Jones

…oth progressive and religious have been like the “the Whos” in Dr. Seuss’ classic Horton Hears a Who, yelling “We are here! We are here! We are here!” just to be noticed. This is how Rev. Tim Ahrens described it in an interview I conducted with him last year about the founding of We Believe Ohio in 2005 (for the full interview see my forthcoming book Progressive & Religious). But in just a few short years, the Whos have indeed been heard. We Belie…

Cross-Burning Hearing Ends, Trial Set to Begin

By Lauri Lebo

…chool District and Freshwater. The district settled with the Dennis family last summer, although the suit against Freshwater awaits. Meanwhile, a federal judge in the civil suit against Freshwater issued an order last week directing Freshwater’s attorneys to turn over billing records related to time spent preparing affidavits related to an interview Freshwater was to have had with investigators. Apparently, the Freshwater team has been less than f…

Bad News for LGBT Anglicans, Mormons, Adventists, Norwegians, Russians, Georgians, Egyptians, Kuwaitis, Saudis…

By Peter Montgomery

…ocal congregations and Adventist ministers, teachers, and nonprofits work. Last year, an Adventist pastor in Maryland was fired after he signed a civil marriage certificate in Washington state for his step-daughter and her partner. Norway: Church of Norway Won’t Let Priests Marry Same-Sex Couples This week the Church of Norway, a protestant denomination, rejected a proposal that it allow religious weddings for same-sex couples, reports Agence Fran…

Sometimes Salvation Looks Like Rage: An Open Letter to “Non-denominational” Churches

By Yazmine Nichols

…ht here in our own backyard? What if we began talking about the increasing number of Black and Latino women, men and children that die at the hands of police every year? As much as non-denominational and evangelical churches zero in on so-called “sins of the flesh” (Galatians 5:19-21), hubris is perhaps the most frequently mentioned sin in the entire Bible. This brings me to my second point. Self-righteousness—the belief that one has exclusive acc…

What Liberals Want: A Response to Susan Thistlethwaite

By Frances Kissling

…. And so Thistlethwaite holds forth in “On Faith” but does not pick up the phone and call Peter. And Peter in turn rails against Wallis who in turn ignores everyone he does not think is more powerful than he (there I just did it; I was nasty). Thistlethwaite suggests that the differences are actually about strategy. Liberals demand complete agreement on all issues to work with others on one issue. Progressives want to reach out to moderates and ev…

The Real Mormon Moment

By Joanna Brooks

…courts for more than a decade. We used the internet to regroup and grow in numbers. The Church even developed its own web-based resources to acknowledge and address its own controversies—historic and contemporary. This, we thought, was a good sign. A sign that might not need to fear losing our membership, our place, in a cherished tradition, just for having and voicing questions, doubts, and differences. We told ourselves to not to be afraid. And…

Pro- and Anti-Muslim Sentiment in Gainesville

By Julie Ingersoll

…entified himself as a Christian of a distinct stripe by advocating burning phone books that advertise abortion and then said he doesn’t have a Qur’an but if he did he would “feed it page by page to (his) goat who would be impervious to its lies.” He then admitted he’d not read the Qur’an because he “doesn’t read fiction.” Another who insisted he didn’t “hate other religions or cultures” then argued that the “so-called Christians” (referring to the…

Are All Religious Experiences Reducible to 16 Desires?

By Andrew Aghapour

…ddressing of everything. My own take on your book is that you multiply the number of psychological motivations we can associate with religion, and so you’re offering a much better, more useful set of motivations than the previous theorists of religion whom you’ve mentioned. Where I’m hesitant is that you claim you’ve found a set of psychological universals, and here’s my reason: we know that culture affects biology, that there’s a give-and-take be…