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Can a Church Split Truly Be Gracious?

By Adam J. Copeland

…alled the “reunification” of the southern-based Presbyterian Church in the United States with the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. There’s a great family photo with my grandfather, great-uncle, father—all pastors—and me sleeping in my stroller in the foreground. Reunification brought my family’s pastors back into the same denomination. In the intervening years while I’ve flirted with Lutheranism and interned in the Church of Scotland, the…

What Do Christians Think About the Netanyahu Speech?

By Sarah Posner

…n Iran, and complaints about the way in which the invitation was extended “petty.” The NCC statement, in contrast, calls the timing and lack of protocol surrounding the invitation “lamentable.” It saves its harsher words, though, for “the tacit support” the appearance “gives to Mr. Netanyahu’s policies, including unbridled settlement building and expansion into Palestinian territory.” Those policies, the statement continues, “erode the chances for…

Win For ‘Natural Family’ Crowd at UN Human Rights Council…

By Peter Montgomery

…d the debate on the bill was “the first time that we actually heard Polish policy makers openly protecting bodily autonomy of trans people and recognizing that trans citizens need to have their dignity assured.” The victory comes in spite of the fact that, as we reported last year, Poland’s Catholic Church had declared war against “gender ideology” and teamed up with members of the ultraconservative United Poland party to form a “stop gender ideol…

Russia Expels Gay American Pastor, An Epidemic of Anti-LGBT Violence in Brazil, And More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…m ahead? Claude Summers explores the possibility of a global schism in the United Methodist Church over the issue of acceptance and ordination of LGBT people. An excerpt: The denomination has been debating the issue for 50 years and has reached no consensus, in part because conservatives have blocked every attempt to forge a compromise. While American members of the UMC are by a slight plurality in favor of reform, most of the denomination’s recen…

Sydney’s Anglican Diocese Gives $1 Million To ‘No’ Campaign on Marriage; and more in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ld make them more vulnerable if support fades.” A gay couple living in the United Kingdom, where their civil union was converted to a marriage, is caught in a nightmarish bureaucratic Catch-22 in which the government of France—where one of the men is from—will not recognize their marriage and thus their adoption of their son. Pink News reports that there are at least a dozen same-sex couples in a similar situation who “have been told that they nee…

No ‘Christian Compassion’ in Tony Perkins’ Response to Anti-Gay Bullying, Suicides

By Andrew Marin

…terates to the religious gatekeepers trying to trap him about governmental policy to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Jesus also made sure to remind everyone not to ‘love the sinner, hate the sin,’ as many recite, but rather to love the sinner and hate the sin in their own life. A few years ago I was involved in a conversation with a partnered gay Christian and a man who identified as ‘ex-gay.’ The latter said: “It’s no…

Tim LaHaye’s World: We’re Living In It

By Jason C. Bivins

…ional efforts—the Institute for Creation Science, the Council for National Policy, the American Coalition for Traditional Values, and his material and conceptual support for Beverly LaHaye’s Concerned Women for America—tangible evidence of the widely known role of New Christian Right organizations in the rise of neoconservatism and recrudescence of populism in the 1970s and thereafter. And it is also appropriate to see in his voluminous writings—f…

Who’s Smearing Obama?

By Svend White

…IL] must be tickled pink that [INSERT POLITICAL OPPONENT] is doing [INSERT POLICY YOU HAVE A VESTED INTEREST IN DISCREDITING].” While the substance of the arguments put forward has been embarrassingly weak, as political strategy it is very shrewd—worthy of the Chinese patron saint of Realpolitik and military strategy, Sun Tzu. In addition to playing to American bigotry by keeping the words “Muslim” and “Obama” in the news, these stratagem function…

Calling Out CatholicVote.com

By Kate Childs Graham

…cVote.com. CatholicVote.com is a project of the Fidelis Center for Law and Policy, which is a 501(c)3 nonprofit charity that focuses on the issues of abortion and marriage. Intrigued, I clicked the link and this is what I saw: I was outraged by many parts of this false representation of my Catholic faith. However, being a recently married lesbian woman, one clip felt particularly devastating. The folks at CatholicVote.com obviously forgot the Cate…

NPR Largely Misses Critical Distinction on Religious Freedom vs. LGBTQ Rights

By Sunnivie Brydum

…the nondiscrimination statute of 1989). Catholic Charities maintained this policy for nearly two years after the 2004 marriage equality decision, until the Massachusetts Roman Catholic bishops instructed Massachusetts Catholic Charities in 2006 to cease providing adoptions to same-sex couples. This came just three months after a unanimous vote by the 42 Catholic Charities board members to continue to place children in same-sex households and was f…