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The Latest to Botch Mormonism: Garry Wills

By Joanna Brooks

…student once told him that: “Like his fellow Mormons, he held that the Declaration of Independence is divinely inspired—in that sense, it is part of Mormon Scripture.” Except for the fact that it really isn’t part of Mormon scripture, either in doctrine or practice. Wills continues: The young man was learning Portuguese, to do his missionary year in Brazil, for which he left before graduation. When, after a year, he came back to complete his studi…

400 Churchgoing Mormons March in SLC Pride Parade

By Joanna Brooks

…Mormons Building Bridges delegation offered an opening prayer through a megaphone. Then, the LDS contingent took its assigned place at the head of the parade and began to march. Some Bridges marchers worried how the crowds would react, especially given the history of LDS Church-backed opposition to same-sex marriage. “But when we turned the first corner onto 200 South Street, the crowd just roared,” says Austin Hollinbaugh, a recent BYU graduate f…

A Journalist in Church, Hiding in Plain Sight

By Andre Tartar

…dy bathroom. For several tense minutes I waited, until it was safe to once again hide in the back row. While cowering in the bathroom, and later in my seat, I rationalized my disappearing act on purely journalistic grounds: I was only there to observe. Yet my rapid heartbeat hinted at something else: fear. Fear of being found out, of being asked straight out if I had accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior—I had not and still have not. As I wo…

High Ark: A Geologist on the True Meaning of Noah’s Flood

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

Culture-war minefields await the hard scientist who dares to wander into the perceived territory of religion, and your readership tends to retreat into their corners, waving flags. When I first heard about the new book from the MacArthur-winning University of Washington professor of geomorphology David R. Montgomery, The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood, I figured it to be a straightforward debunking of the so-called “Flood…

Safety Not Guaranteed

By Jeanne Carstensen

…n the flood zone map. I see every pixel in my mind’s eye and assure myself again that we’re in Orange, not Red. We will be OK. The news anchors aren’t saying anything about the explosion. The TV flickers, then the lights, then everything is dark everywhere. The next day we wake up in the dark, light candles. We turn on the battery-powered radio and learn that what we had heard was a power station on 14th Street, about eight blocks away, blowing…

Republicans in Favor of Reproductive Rights

By Katie Toth

…the issue of choice,” she says. “These labels have lost their meaning.” In a Gallup poll earlier this year, 72 percent of Republicans and 50 percent of the general population identified as “pro-life”; the number of Americans who identified as “pro-choice” hit a record low. But respondents’ opinions on policy issues around abortion had not drastically changed from previous years. Just over half of Americans think abortion should be “legal under cer…

Eid on 9/11 Anniversary?

By Haroon Moghul

…endar makes a full pilgrimage through the seasons. When I was growing up, Ramadan, the most sacred month of the Muslim year, was in the winter. Muslims abstain from food, drink, and sex during daylight hours. Ramadan in the New England winter is a bit like cheating: Fasting for incredibly short days is nice and easy. (The cold weather also means there’s less to look at, if you follow my meaning.) This year, Ramadan comes in August. A lot of my fel…

Maryland Governor says Support for Marriage Equality “Very Much Informed” by his Catholicism

By Peter Montgomery

…clergy from having to perform any ceremony that violates their beliefs, guarantees each faith control over its marriage doctrine, and “provides that religious organizations and certain related entities are not required to provide goods, services, or benefits to an individual related to the celebration or promotion of marriage in violation of their religious beliefs.” Josh Levin, who directs the pro-equality campaign, said it is working with sever…

Who’s Accusing Who of Mormon-Baiting?

By Joanna Brooks

Yesterday, Bill Donohue and the Catholic League charged the Obama campaign with “Mormon baiting.” The evidence? A report in US News & World Report, based on one blog piece by Deal Hudson, president of the Pennsylvania Catholics Network, a conservative Catholic advocacy group, who is accusing Catholics for Obama of staging an anti-Mormon “whispering campaign” against Mitt Romney. Deal wrote that one Catholic friend told him she had been called by…

Missouri Pastor Goes Viral on Gawker: ‘Separation of Church and Hate’

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…in 1960, in which he (as I understand it) was partly responding to Billy Graham’s move toward advocating for social reforms in the South. I did a bunch of Google searches related to strings like “sermons on segregation” or “sermons supporting racism” and started compiling phrases similar to what I had been hearing in Springfield. It was actually one of the easier speeches I’ve ever written, mostly because so much of it was quoted material. After a…