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Pro-Gay Marriage Mormon Keeps Faith Despite Church Pressure

By Joanna Brooks

…and within days an official at LDS Church headquarters placed a concerned phone call to Melanie S.’s local clergy. Three times her bishop met with Melanie to discuss the video. Because she had affiliated with “Mormons for Marriage,” he questioned whether or not Melanie and her husband should be allowed to keep their temple recommends—certificates that allow the most worthy and devoted Mormons to participate in the faith’s sacred temple rites. Nor…

Shukr: Gratitude

By Amina Wadud

…on the heels of the birth of my second grandson. One minute we were on the phone and I was describing the birth event and sharing photos on Facebook. The next day, she went to bed, coughed once, and then breathed no more. She was 44. I thought about her when I read in the Qur’an how “every soul will have its taste of death.” So gentle was her moment of passing, and yet so painful has been these few months without her here to enjoy this Ramadan to…

Battling for the Soul of the Democratic Party

By Sarah Posner

…ve sexuality education, full inclusion of women and sexual minorities, and reproductive health and justice. The religious left is still struggling to find an organizing and base-building model, while the center-right continues to dominate the conversation and capture the attention of politicians. A new book, Dispatches from the Religious Left, edited by the journalist Frederick Clarkson, attempts to start the conversation—though by its own admissi…

The Glorious, Ethnically-Challenged, Sisterhood of Spy

By Haroon Moghul

…goans need to stop trying. (As consolation prize, you can have the world’s number 2 pizza.) Of course, we don’t know if Cooper can do it. Cooper doesn’t think she can. But her boss believes the deskbound analyst has the potential to become a kickass field agent. Women empowering women. (Also, apparently, no other U.S. operative has the necessary skills to pull this off. Literally, there are three other CIA agents, all male and all compromised, and…

Fear, Guns, and the (Unwinnable) War Against Death: A Letter to My Fellow Americans

By Beatrice Marovich

…shooting. I spent a full hour, numb with terror, refreshing the news on my phone and waiting to be reassured that the violence had been contained. The (unarmed) door guards at the school’s drop-off line know my daughter’s tricks; how she likes to stall and take her sweet time. And I watch her dance away into the little building where she builds her dreams and plays with her friends every day. I can hold it together until I drive away, but then it…

We Declare You Restored: How Christian ‘Forgiveness’ is Deployed to Enable Abuse and Corruption

By Greg Carey

…see reforms in the area of sexual abuse. That commission, according to the Report, should include “a balanced representation of male and female members, including survivors of sexual abuse, and expert advisers who are trauma-informed.” Nothing in the public record suggests that either Hunt or Freeze entered into a process of genuine accountability that includes review by outside parties or attends to the women they’ve harmed. Their offenses are fr…

Scott Roeder’s Religion

By Sarah Posner

…raphed a piece of paper on the dashboard of Roeder’s car: It contained the phone number of Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue’s senior policy advisor, who served two years in prison for conspiring to bomb abortion clinics in 1988. Roeder also told me that Sullenger was present at the lunch with Newman where they discussed “justifiable” homicide, and that Newman had given Roeder the autographed copy of his book just three months before Roeder kille…

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

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…d give up after the public outcry in February? Ah, not so. As Nick Baumann reports for Mother Jones: The backdoor reintroduction of the statutory rape change relies on the use of a committee report, a document that congressional committees produce outlining what they intend a piece of legislation to do. If there’s ever a court fight about the interpretation of a law—and when it comes to a subject as contentious as abortion rights, there almost alw…

A Faith-Based Opportunity for Obama

By Sarah Posner

…ite House official told me. Michelle Boorstein at the Washington Post also reports that DuBois also will be writing “a book of devotionals for leaders based on the ones he sends the president each day.” A successor has not been announced. But DuBois’ departure gives the White House an opportunity to recast the office with a director focused on overseeing significant constitutional protections, rather than sending the president scripture, tweeting…

Kendrick Lamar’s Hip-Hop Jeremiad

By Josiah Daniels

…endrick’s Jeremiad. (It should be noted that if the title tracks of UU are representative of when he recorded them then it would seem that Kendrick was wrestling with his prophetic vocation even when he was recording TPAB. I don’t think it’s an accident though that tracks from UU didn’t make it on TPAB. Usually a prophecy comes before a lament—e.g. first the Book of Jeremiah then the Book of Lamentations.) What I want to do here is suss out a comp…