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Pittsburgh Paradox: A City Haunted by God and Steel

By Ed Simon

…uthern and Eastern European immigrants brought a Catholicism that ties the city with New York City and Boston as per capita the most Catholic in the country; how the Great Migration of African Americans brought new faith traditions; how it became home to one of the largest urban Jewish communities; and how Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists have added to the region’s spiritual diversity. Something else cuts across denominational lines, however, becaus…

East Lansing Demonstrates How Not to Respond to Anti-LGBT “Christian” Businesses

By Sunnivie Brydum

…ent, but rather focuses on another problematic course of behavior from the city of East Lansing. The direct communication between city officials and the Tennes family was unwise, if not illegal. It created a paper trail strongly suggesting the city’s motive for denying Country Mill Farms’ application for the farmers market was based on the city’s dislike of a practice that the Tennes family claimed was central to their faith. The timing of the cit…

The Apocalypse Is Upon Us, Ted Cruz Endorsement Edition

By Sarah Posner

…d the grandeur of it all,” said Kendall Beachey, who moved from Indiana to Kansas City in 2008, abandoning his college studies to become an IHOP intern. He ended up staying, and graduated in 2012 from IHOPU, which, according to promotional materials, trains “forerunner messengers” to stand against “liberal theology,” “radical Islam,” and “the mediocre expression of Christianity.” The allure of Bickle’s teaching, said Beachey, is that his followers…

The Theology of Westboro: The “World’s Meanest Church” Is More Than Picket Signs

By Rebecca Barrett-Fox

…on the local level, and Topeka, Kansas, where the church is located, is a city of over 125,000 people—not a big city but also not a rural backwater. Also only one church member—founding pastor Fred Phelps, who died over a year ago—was from the South. Our decision to depict anti-LGBT bigots using these stereotypes reveals some larger cultural prejudices. We’re very comfortable assuming that people like this are bigots and bullies, and it’s harder…

Bishop Finn-dicted For Protecting Pedophile Priest

By Anthea Butler

Kansas City Bishop Robert W. Finn was indicted along with the Diocese of Kansas City on Friday for failure to report an egregious case of child abuse. The misdemeanor indictment involves Finn’s protection of a pedophile priest, Father Shawn Ratigan, who kept child pornography on his computer. Ratigan was allowed to continue priestly duties throughout the diocese, including contact with children, even though hundreds of photographs of children wer…

“You’ve Never Met a Muslim”

By Hussein Rashid

…r of Muslims, but it was New York that did that. The city of my birth, the city under attack, was also the city that refused to retreat into cowardice. I have nearly a dozen stories of people who said to me, in either words or deeds, that if you are a New Yorker, it does not matter your faith; come and grieve with us. I traveled the country giving talks about Muslims after 9/11, but the safest, warmest, and most trusting I ever felt was in New Yor…

Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…

Can Expelled Teach Us a Thing or Two?

By Arri Eisen

…ans would be attracted to, appreciate and consider careers in science (the number is decreasing annually). I bet we’d have more productive conversation among students and leaders of science and religion around the many profound issues in our nation that engage both: abortion, medical care, stem cells, homosexuality, and genomic research. The battle rhetoric would fade and, more than likely, movies like Expelled wouldn’t be made in the first place….

Mitt Romney’s Prosperity Gospel

By Peter Laarman

…I fervently wish that Mr. Obama would say a bit more about the problem of cheap grace. Reminding us that people who work very hard for very little are not the abusers of cheap grace, but that others in well-feathered nests who are preaching sacrifice might be in real trouble on the cheap grace front. Obama cannot and should not condemn those in the electorate who buy into Romney’s “there will be showers of blessing” message, but he probably does …

Swift-Boat Veterans of American Jewry Charge Anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street

By Jay Michaelson

…es ECI’s leadership – knows this to be the case. Which makes ECI’s video a cheap lie — yet another in a long litany of desperate efforts by the far right to convert the largely liberal American Jewish community to neo-conservatism, hawkish policies on Israel, and the belief that “Barack Hussein Obama” is a Muslim. That said, there actually are two interesting forms of antisemitism going on here. First is the antisemitism of ECI itself. To tug at…