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New Study Touts Success of “Praying Away the Gay”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…d his colleague, Rob Tisinai, gives a better breakdown of what the numbers really mean—and it isn’t a rousing success story about “change.” “Out of 98 highly-motivated subjects, the authors found that a small, unspecified number can use prayer and counseling to shut down their sexual feelings or become a bit more bi. And possibly none who turned straight.” Even the researchers call their conclusions “overly optimistic.” “These results do not prove…

A Dismayed Democrat Reads the Bible

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…y is to misunderstand what Easter is about in the New Testament. Easter is really about two things: Jesus continues to be known and God has vindicated Jesus. By which I mean, God has said ‘Yes!’ to Jesus and ‘No!’ to the powers that killed him. Those are the central truths of Easter, as I see it. To turn the question of Easter into a conflict about whether the tomb was really empty is an enormous distraction. Getting back to what you said earlier…

How America Really Lost Its Mind: Hint, It Wasn’t Entirely the Fault of Hippie New Agers and Postmodern Academics

By Christopher Douglas

…to produce the public appearance of undecidability: that the experts can’t really agree on the science. Under those circumstances, everyone must make a faith decision about what to believe of our biological origins—choose what you like. This structure of debate is a fairly close approximation of Jean-François Lyotard’s famous account of science in The Postmodern Condition. Lyotard argues that science consists of a series of rhetorical utterances—t…

Beliefnet Readers: Are You Really Offended by the Word “Feminism”?

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ent years crafting. What does surprise me is this: Evidently a non-trivial number of readers of Beliefnet out there are offended by the word feminist. They don’t just disagree with certain tenets of feminism (which is far from monolithic, btw). They don’t just think, “Eh, that’s not really my thing, but whatevs, I like the site anyway and there are zillions of other people to read there. Oh, say! I think I’ll take the ‘What religion are you?’ quiz…

Sympathy for the Devils: I Was a Pastor to Trump Supporters

By Daniel Schultz

…e. Ditto pastors who wanted them to learn songs from that new hymnal. They really, literally believed there was an objective, unchangeable pecking order in society, and they really, literally, believed that it had God’s blessing on it for the good of humanity. America’s Problem Child would absolutely have been their guy. Admittedly, the experiences I’m detailing here go back almost twenty years, and reflect even earlier history. Many of the people…

Has Sojourners Really Changed its Policy on
Gay Ads?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…only difference is the focus — but it is a difference that, well, makes a really big difference. The ad, sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Ali Forney Center focuses on the problem of homelessness within the LGBT community. It depicts a child sitting on a railroad track, teddy-bear in hand and a suitcase beside him. In the background is a man — presumably his father — walking away — rejecting him for who he is….

“Nobody Is Innocent”: David Gushee on Sexual Ethics, Suffering, and Full Inclusion for LGBT Christians

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…me a long time and I hope that my regret for the long journey is clearly communicated in the book. I am sorry it took me so long to put it all together. It’s like being in a movie where someone is trying to crack a safe and there’s six numbers and you have to get all six numbers right for the safe to open. I think that’s what’s happened for me. Finally, all six numbers came up and I was able to open the safe and I could see this in a new way. Tha…

What We Really Talk About When We Talk About Health Care

By Douglas Harrison

…part of America – a largely white, largely Christian, very angry part – is really talking (and often shouting) about something else entirely. In Hillsboro, Mo., not too far from where I grew up in the evangelical heart of the Ozark foothills, a furious crowd packed Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill’s town-hall forum on health care earlier this week in order to shout her down practically before she even started speaking. When she asked what the crow…

Mr. President, Your Papers Please: The Birther Inquisition

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ike this: force a Jew to convert. But now you worry that he or she did not really convert; they simply said something they didn’t really mean, and are probably continuing to practice their old religion in secret. So now you need an Inquisition, to determine (under duress) whether what they claim they are now is really the case. The only way to be certain often involved torture and death. So the half-hidden logic runs through four dizzying and dism…

Rebuilding the Wall of Separation: A Progressive Discussion on Church & State

By Bruce Ledewitz

…concerns” into secular language when debating public issues. Richard Rorty really did call religious arguments in the public square “conversation stoppers” and urge their exclusion. John Rawls really did call religion a comprehensive doctrine at odds with liberal argument (but not only religion). These instances of hostility to private religious speech faded only in the face of political opposition. And, more to our point here, why should seculari…