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Pope Invites his Flock to Join Facebook: Is the Digital Reformation Here?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…g with regard to religious practice in particular. Both internet and smart phone users were more likely to participate in religious or spiritual groups than were people who do not regularly use digital media. By “participate,” the researchers were referring to physical, geographically located, face-to-face engagement: attending meetings, volunteering, taking leadership roles, and donating money. In all of these categories, participation was higher…

Racial Justice Will Be Top Priority for New Prez of the United Church of Christ

By Frederick Clarkson

…nsidering new ways of “being church.” His vision is a bold one, but on the phone he quietly shrugs it off, saying it’s just a continuation of the Congregational tradition of more than 400 years. ________________ Frederick Clarkson: In Beyond Resistance you say that we are living in the dawning of a “postmodern” age of Christianity that may last for 500 years. What kind of church do you see emerging? Dorhauer: The first thing I want to say about th…

The Passion of Katniss: How the Hunger Games Confronts the Trauma of Violence

By Michael Schulson

…answer to those questions is, in my opinion, a most definite yes. Over the phone, Deaton explained that Collins captures the helplessness of its hero–and, through that sense of helplessness, the dynamics of trauma. “Trauma really is about the moment of freezing,” said Deaton. “What is traumatic is when there’s nothing that can be done.” Collins, he said, sustains a kind of trapped tension throughout the books—that feeling that you’re “never really…

For Clergy Who Ministered Through the AIDS Crisis Covid is Both Eerily Familiar and Puzzlingly Different

By Lynne Gerber

…from ministry, locked down at home, and “trying to be of service over the phone and zoom” to people in his church facing another pandemic. Pieters is part of a unique cohort for whom the current pandemic is both eerily familiar and puzzlingly different. LGBT Christian clergy who ministered in queer communities in the 1980s and 90s are engaging Covid-19 using some lessons learned from AIDS ministry in the years before treatment. They’re also grapp…

How Do We Break the Cycle of Religious Violence in South Asia?

By Sunita Viswanath

…religiously-motivated pogroms afterwards. A few weeks ago, I spoke on the phone with a leader of New York City’s Bangladeshi Hindu community, who was extremely resistant to making the connection between the persecution of his fellow Hindus in Bangladesh and the persecution of Muslims in India. He insisted, “Please don’t tell me about India. I only want to focus on my people, Hindus in Bangladesh.” I suggested that there was folly in focusing on t…

Bishop Minerva Carcaño Has a Nearly Impossible Job

By Mary E. Hunt

…f women’s leadership in mainline Christian denominations—and if our recent phone conversation is any indication, she has her work cut out for her. She must assume the bishop’s role of watcher or overseer; she must surpass her male colleagues in competence to show that a woman, in her case an Hispanic woman, can be a good bishop; and, she must find a way to live out her own unique commitments with integrity. As was said of the legendary Ginger Roge…

Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t: The Problem of the Rape Exception

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…hicago NORC General Social Survey. From the nineties to the ‘aughties that number rose from 16% to 21%—more than one in five Americans. Meanwhile the GOP has, since January, been busy trying to shrink the very definition of rape to only deem those who suffered “forcible rape” eligible to receive federal funding for an abortion. Forcible. Not statutory rape. These are the kinds of distinctions they find it crucial to draw. What, you thought they’…

Gay Black Church: An Interview with Bishop Yvette Flunder

By Lisa Webster

…ches in the U.S. gathered together. I don’t know anybody that has a larger number of black gay churches meeting together. Not gay churches—the MCC definitely has the corner on that. Do you work together? Very closely. In fact I have an MCC credential, an ordination. Were there times in your life when you did question your ability to stay in the church? I’ve had some dark, dark days. I don’t deny that at all. I have no reason to, because I think t…

Mormons Prepare for WA Marriage Equality Fight

By Joanna Brooks

…asked them if the LDS Church was getting involved, and the staffer on the phone said, “We’re meeting with church leaders right this minute; they’re at lunch with Focus on the Family and [National Organization for Marriage-sponsored] Preserve Marriage Washington.” To this day, we don’t know whether it was local or general church leaders who met with Preserve Marriage Washington—we believe they were local leaders. But a reporter for the Boston Glob…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…ce at winning, given the state’s Democratic leanings and promising polling numbers. O’Malley said that expansive religious freedom language in the law was important to its passage and in keeping with the traditions of the state of Maryland. The referendum language makes clear that the law protects clergy from having to perform any ceremony that violates their beliefs, guarantees each faith control over its marriage doctrine, and “provides that rel…