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Will Women Priests Change the Church?

By Mary E. Hunt

…that it simply cannot ordain women because Jesus did not do so, that the “deposit of faith” does not include it, that the “unity of the church” will be broken, and various other theologically discredited notions. He does so with the patience and equanimity of someone who has been mouthing these same old ideas for some time, come what may. I can imagine that he might, at a later date, just as easily say, “As we have always and everywhere taught, i…

How to Choose a Tour Company for Your Hajj

By Amina Wadud

…ers”), I had to make a commitment to send a two-thousand dollar refundable deposit. I did, and so the counter-commitment began. So I start with my questions: knowing the Saudi restrictions that women cannot travel without a mahram, I asked if there would be a problem for me. I get an answer that borders on a fiqh explanation about mahram “in Islam.” I thought, well now, that’s an interesting way to respond to a visa question. However, for me they…

Good News Bad News

By Amina Wadud

…ad no idea about my chances even after I committed the two-thousand dollar deposit. Instead, I just followed all the steps and just after Ramadan I surrendered my passport along with the filled-in visa application, immunization record, waiver, six passport-size photos, and the remaining balance of the cost of the trip. Of course I didn’t hear anything from the tour company, so I called them to make sure everything was in order. Still nervous two w…

Clergy May Soon Find Taxes Soaring As Result of an Under-the-Radar Ruling

By Patrick Hornbeck

…than their salaries might suggest. At issue is section 107 of the U.S. Tax Code, which contains two subsections pertaining to “the case of a minister of the gospel.” (The term was originally intended to refer only to ordained Christian clergy, but its meaning was later expanded by the Internal Revenue Service to include their counterparts in other religious traditions.) The first subsection, 107(1), allows a minister to exclude from taxable income…

‘Anti-Romeo’ Vigilante Squads Target Men Suspected Of Being Gay; More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…l Justice Reform “has lambasted the Aceh administration’s Islamic criminal code bylaw, or Qanun Jinayat, saying it could potentially provoke discrimination and over-criminalization of LGBT communities and other vulnerable groups.” The Aceh province is governed by the conservative Islamist legal code. Notes the Jakarta Post: Qanun Jinayat imposes criminal sanctions on both Muslims and non-Muslims found to have consumed liquor, dated in public or ca…

Huckabee Calls For Civil Disobedience, Utterly Misreads MLK, Jr.

By Peter Gathje

…uples. The third criterion Dr. King identifies is that “an unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.” For same sex couples to have legal access just like heterosexual couples…

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

By Sarah Posner

…. So it’s more about representation and identity than it is about specific codes or laws.” Even though some political activists in Middle Eastern and North African countries promote “Islamic law” in reaction to the imposition of European-style government and legal systems on them, there is no single school of thought on what shari’ah, or divine law, is or means—and there is no single, accepted legal code. “If Islamic law were some book where you c…

Nxivm Scam Is Dead, but ‘Brainwashing’ Pseudoscience Lives On

By James T. Richardson

…l court in New York for allegedly violating federal racketeering statutes (RICO) as we used the mail and phones to discuss how to counter their efforts to promote pseudo-scientific theories in court. That suit was eventually dismissed but not before causing considerable trouble and expense for those scholars. Singer and Ofshe then refiled the suit in California state court as a libel action, but that too was eventually dismissed, and Singer and Of…

Is This Finally the Reckoning for the Catholic Church on Sexual Abuse?

By Patricia Miller

…pornography, the Mann Act—any of these could be the underlying crimes for RICO.” The leveling of criminal conspiracy charges against members of the Catholic hierarchy would be a stunning denouement for men who, until recently, regularly met with U.S. presidents and influenced public policy on everything from women’s access to contraception to the simmering argument about transgender identity. It would signal that after a century of acquiescence t…

TV’s Favorite Family Dumps Religion

By Bron Taylor

…But back to Modern Family, and this episode’s second act, in which Manny (Rico Rodriguez), Jay’s stepson, weighs in on Jay’s nature spirituality. On the one hand, he explains, he likes “what Jay said about God being in nature,” and opts to join Jay for a day at the golf course—instead of church. But once there, Manny begins to pester Jay with the obvious existential questions that arise for those questioning theism. He asks, “So aren’t you worrie…