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Marriage equality and ‘the end of Catholic Ireland’; Gambian Prez vows to slit gays’ throats; Colombian govt affirms support for marriage and adoption; global LGBT recap

By Peter Montgomery

…f voters in favor of passing the amendment on May 22. That is a staggering number, considering that Irish voters only approved divorce in 1995, and with a margin of less than 1%. It also reflects how diminished the power of the Catholic Church has become over the past 20 years, thanks in large part to devastating sexual abuse scandals that have undermined its moral authority. Catholic bishops have come under fire from some conservative laypeople f…

Forced Cremation of Covid Dead in Sri Lanka Further Marginalizes Muslim Community

By Andrea Malji and Amarnath Amarasingam

…eported deaths. A Muslim leader in Sri Lanka informed the authors that the number is actually higher, and that 82 Muslims have died, with over 70 cremations. The cremation of the victims was carried out by the state without the approval of the families. When Muslim and Christian families of cremated victims brought their case to the Supreme Court, the court refused to hear the case. In protest, Muslim families have started to refuse the remains of…

Before Black Twitter: How the Early Black Press Shaped American Discourse Around Race and Religion

By Benjamin P. Fagan

…to say even about the five newspapers that I do cover in my book. But the vast number of people and papers that I wasn’t able to concentrate on in the book just underscores how much work there is left to do on the black press. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic? Outside of a small group of specialists in early African-American print culture, most people that I’ve talked to about my subject are surprised to learn that bla…

The Family Research Council’s Mistaken Identity

By Sarah Posner

…the radical far right, described in the FBI’s Project Megiddo report as “a vast number and variety of groups, such as survivalists, militias, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, Christian Identity churches, the AN and skinheads.” The report called Christian Identity “the most unifying theology for a number of these diverse groups and one widely adhered to by white supremacists. It is a belief system that provides its members with a religious basis for ra…

Satanic or Silly: Does Yale Press Censorship of Cartoons Insult Muslims?

By Daniel Martin Varisco

…gs in Pakistan and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, there are far more relevant pretexts available than an Ivy League book that may not even warrant review in major newspapers. The peddlers of Islamophobia in the media, popular trade books, and blogs would have us believe that radical extremists are lurking everywhere just waiting for an excuse to promote violence. To suggest that deadly protest over these images can be rekindled by a book that at…

How Not To Defend Atheism

By Vlad Chituc

…tingly worse, other atheists have been calling Silverman out for falsely inflating the number of atheists for more than four years. And last year, I specifically asked Silverman if he would stop reporting the stats on “nones” as being representative of atheism, and he told me he would. Yet here we are. There’s a philosopher at the UC Riverside I admire named Eric Schwitzgebel. One of his more popular theories is his theory of jerks, which he defin…

Hell, in Rob Bell’s Own Words: State of Belief Radio

By The Editors

…ere it started, a number of years ago. [WG]: This is going to sound like a flip question and it’s not a flip question; but Rob, why do we have to have hell? I mean there are people who seem to resent the fact that there would even be an opportunity for some people to enjoy whatever is we call heaven. It’s like they resent that. [RB]: Right, right. It’s very interesting. There is this fascinating letter called First Timothy, where the writer Paul s…

Special Report: Have Evangelical Colleges Succumbed to “Theological Paranoia”?

By Chrissy Stroop

…got him into trouble, Giberson has been closely following the recent conservative backlash on evangelical campuses. When RD spoke with him in September he observed that “the white, male evangelical power structure in the United States is toppling, and that constituency is not prepared to share leadership.” Asked about the Hawkins case in a recent email, Giberson called it “another indication of a theological paranoia that seems to be sweeping acro…

Participant Discredits the Original Ex-Gay Study

By Warren Throckmorton

…dings with the 11 subjects (from page 1555, see below). Bussee was subject number two and Cooper was number one. Both Bussee and Cooper were rated as Kinsey 6 (exclusively homosexual) before change and a 0 (exclusively heterosexual) after change. Since there was no follow-up, this study has been used to support the proposition that gays could change to straight via religious mediation. For instance, not knowing any of this background at the time,…

Breivik’s Religious Pluralist Vision: A COEXIST Bumper Sticker Without the Crescent

By Michael J. Altman

…of most of the conservative groups Breivik imagined would join his cause. That thesis and its attendant Orientalist images of Islam are what Pat Buchanan and Bryan Fisher share with Breivik, though perhaps only he could imagine the connections that, in his mind, would unite Hindutva, American conservatives and neoconservatives, and European nationalists in a war against Islam. Only Breivik could imagine a post-clash world where each region of the…