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Ignoring the Pope on Climate Change is Not Like Using Contraception

By Kevin M. Lowe

…tudies have repeatedly shown that Catholics use contraception in identical numbers to non-Catholics, and generally in good conscience. As Republican attempts to privatize the climate crisis already suggest, conservative Catholics may continue to reject Laudato si just as the vast majority of Catholics have long since rejected Humanae vitae, as Patti Miller noted here on RD. Yet the two issues are not in fact equivalent. For an explanation, we can…

Irony Really is Dead: GOP Plans to Send Adulterous Third Wife of Serial Philanderer as Ambassador to Vatican

By Patricia Miller

…lic bolster of the president, although noted cultural warriors like former Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn and Harvard’s Mary Ann Glendon have served in the role. And Trump himself reportedly said that he wanted to give Callista the position mainly to get Newt out of his hair. But imagine a scenario in which a Democrat nominated as ambassador to a highly conservative religious entity that bans divorce a woman who was not only her husband’s third wife,…

Russian Operative Maria Butina, Who Leveraged Christian Right Connections, Sentenced For Conspiracy

By Becky Garrison

…ions between Russia and the US is about occur.’” In an email exchange, Rob Boston, Editor of Church & State, spoke about this connection between Russian operatives and the religious right. America’s homegrown theocrats are increasingly looking to Russia and other authoritarian former East Bloc nations as models for the United States. These countries tend to be homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic. They’re often run by quasi-dictators who are hi…

Giving RD The Finger?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…religion coverage, Silk pays closer attention to blogs associated with the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, US News & World Report, and USA Today. This is all brilliant in its quiet, descriptive way. Silk is especially mindful of the ways in which we are bombarded by news and information from the time we wake to the time we retire. He has structured his response by simply walking us through his day, reminding us that we are always (both actively…

What Salman Rushdie’s Attacker Shares with Insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…the story of the Tsarnaev brothers who were convicted of terrorism in the Boston marathon bombings in 2013. The older brother especially was something of an underachiever, having essentially failed at all his endeavors. In Matar’s case, he also had failed academically and had been working at a Marshall’s clothing store in a job that did not inspire him. In the off-hours he worked out at a gym and was trying to learn how to box, though some of the…

Historian Matthew Stewart Upends the Widespread Belief that 19th Century U.S. Christianity Was On ‘The Right Side of History’

By Peter Laarman

…xcommunicated” and went on to found his own 28th Congregational Society in Boston as a haven for freethinkers and committed abolitionists. Which is not to say that Theodore Parker was without his own blind spots. Like many other “enlightened” New Englanders, Parker hated slavery but also clung to racist views, viewing Black people as naturally “docile,” while viewing so-called “Anglo-Saxons” as a superior strain of humanity. Douglass, who found wa…

The Right to Bear Arms, and Not to Get Birth Control

By Sarah Posner

…o shield religious institutions from a very similar rule. According to the Boston Globe, there was a substantially similar requirement in Massachusetts, and when proposing his own overhaul of the state’s health insurance system, he made no effort to change it based on the religious objections of Catholic institutions. As I noted yesterday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and their allies are ramping up the “religious freedom” wars for the…

Rising to Heaven in a Secular Rapture: Trump’s Golden Promises

By Eric C. Miller

…think they needed government because the churches often did offer a great number of services. They were tithed, members gave ten percent of their income to sustaining the church, and whatever problem they had, they could take it to the church. It was very central to their lives. At the same time, they sensed that they were Christians in an America that was becoming increasingly non-Christian, so I often heard them say things like, “You can’t say…

Lincoln and Obama: A Precarious Parallel

By Susan Henking

…ous media discussions of this including the NY Times Book Review or in the Boston Globe.) Is Obama’s invocation of Lincoln meant to raise questions about sexuality? Of course not. And yet, we might ask: what does the rendering invisible of that particular Lincoln tell us about the Obama who has included evangelical pastor Rick Warren—and belatedly New Hampshire Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson—in his inauguration? Nor have we inquired about the risk…

Neologism of the Week: ‘Tragicglee’

By Kate Blanchard

…es were themselves. Regardless of who turns out to be responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings, it seems certain that some will gleefully capitalize on them, turning the perpetrators into examples of broader stupidity. Meanwhile, there’s the inevitable glee over the inappropriate glee. (I am not pointing fingers, by the way. I, too, have been known to be overzealous in my criticism of perceived opponents, before all the information was in, an…