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The Forgotten Struggle Over Gender and Bigotry in Christianity

…ister in the mid-nineteenth century, now has fewer than a million members. Today the Mormons outnumber the church of the Pilgrims seven to one—and the Mormons are not ordaining any women. The church is the last institution in America where it is still legal to discriminate on the basis of gender. So, an ancient Christian credo declaring solidarity across ethnic lines, class division, and gender difference sounded a little unbelievable to someone w…

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Let The Sun Shine In: Marriage Equality Comes to Broadway

…r and Marriage Equality There are many risks in doing a production of Hair today because of the ways that society has changed; the play could easily come across now as camp or nostalgia. Yes, we are a nation that continues to wage war, which still creates indescribable tragedy in our contemporary lives. But with Iraq and Afghanistan, we “sacrificed” by going shopping, the bodies of dead soldiers were hidden from our television sets, and we allowed…

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Religious Freedom Not Harmed by Tenth Circuit Decision in Utah Marriage Case

…Marriage Act. Like many of the district court opinions, the Tenth Circuit today rejected arguments that marriage equality infringes on the religious freedom of its opponents. Because, the court noted, it ruled that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution, its opponents cannot argue against it based on claims that legalizing it would result in infringements of religious freedom or create religious strife. The opinion…

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Netanyahu’s (Republican) Esther Moment

…cent of them have a favorable view of Netanyahu, according to Pew poll out today, and conducted during the escalating controversy over the prime minister’s speech. Meanwhile, 53 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of the Israeli leader, reflecting, as the Pew report explains, divides that are religious as well as partisan: “Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants have the most favorable impressions of Netanyahu (50% favorabl…

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Apocalypse Now and Then: How a Biblical Genre Shapes American Politics

…theology that animates evangelical Christians today. Extreme moral dualism Today’s white evangelicals in the U.S.—along with many conservative white Catholics and mainline Protestants—imagine themselves to be the persecuted faithful, victims of state oppression in the mold of biblical apocalypses. While this might seem ludicrous to outsiders, it aptly captures their sense of the disorder of the last half century as they’ve been compelled to share…

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Welcome to the “Spin-od”: Conservatives Look to Halt Reforms on Divorce and Other “Family Matters”

…ring the synod, but it was possible to change pastoral practice to reflect today’s realities. … The new practices, it was claimed, simply fit better with the current situation of many people in the Church. But that wasn’t manipulation—it was the key purpose of the synod and the question Francis asked it to address. Most of what conservatives term “manipulation” was newly empowered progressive bishops pushing for change, something they hadn’t had t…

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Rallies Honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s Support of Organized Labor

…ckelberry was one of the men who marched alongside King during the strike. Today, Mr. Nickelberry, 79, is still hauling Memphis’ garbage, as he has done for more than 55 years. I wrote about Nickelberry in September: Like his fellow sanitation workers back then, he heaved rusted cans over his head. Wet garbage and maggots leaked down his collar and the back of his shirt. There of riding the bus home and people complaining that he smelled because t…

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Dilemmas of American Empire: Can Obama Pull Off a Game-Changer in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan?

…Natanz with a nuclear weapon until the Joint Chiefs rebelled against them. Today there is a serious possibility that the Netanyahu government in Israel will carry out the bombing option. If it does, the entire region could explode into a ball of fire. That’s the apocalyptic scenario. The hopeful one is a game-changer based on two or three years of sustained diplomacy. The U.S. could declare that it recognizes the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic…

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Trump’s Fear and Loathing Won’t Silence The Nation’s Sole LGBT Muslim Organization

…very day! Raquel: There are certainly many things to be concerned about in today’s political reality. However, the things that trouble us today are the continuation of the very same things that plagued our society during the Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush senior, Reagan administrations, and beyond. Racism is not new. Misogyny is not new. Xenophobia is not new. Our government’s continued alliances with fascists and theocrats? Not new. The things margin…

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The Left Behind: Why Are White American Christians So Racist?

…science, or really, just liberalism on many scores. To put it another way, today’s “Nones” might have been the loosely-affiliated white Christians of fifty years ago, balancing at least nominally those more invested in the social order. I can say as a matter of practical experience that as white American Christianity contracts, the people left behind in the pews are indeed those most committed to preserving the social order. Keeping tradition aliv…

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