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How a Powerful ‘Ex-Gay’ Pastor is Chasing the Latino Vote

By Katherine Stewart

…ersuade their congregations to vote their “biblical” values. A substantial number of Church United gatherings are conducted in the Spanish language, and the organization has spawned at least one affiliate, Alianza de Pastores Unidos de San Diego, whose members minister to largely Spanish-speaking audiences. It wasn’t always this way, of course, and it isn’t going to change overnight. Many of the southern white evangelical groups that remain entren…

Why The Book of Mormon (the Musical) is Awesomely Lame

By Jared Farmer

…pecializes in milquetoast Americana, including Broadway favorites. From the 1950s through the 1990s, Utah wards (congregations) staged summer “roadshows”—touring musical skits in church-wide competition. Today, Mormons are among the last Americans to preserve the once-popular tradition of community pageants. The cheesiness parodied in The Book of Mormon is nothing compared the annual Miracle of Mormon Pageant in Manti, Utah, or the Hill Cumorah Pa…

Economy Yields Too Few Prophets

By Peter Laarman

…mployed workers for every new job opening. And as of last month the actual number of workers in crisis is not the 14 million who are officially unemployed (as if that number were acceptable), but more like 29 million people, if you count people no longer looking or working at sharply reduced hours or taking big pay and benefit cuts. That is 18 percent of the total workforce and still rising. What’s more, three-fourths of those losing work over the…

The Plot to Turn the Synod into a “Plot”

By Patricia Miller

…nod is to take up. The Supreme Pontiff may, if he so chooses, increase the number of members of the Synod of Bishops by adding bishops, or religious to represent the religious institutes, or clerics who are experts, to the extent of fifteen percent of the total number of the members mentioned in articles V and VIII. Despite this, Douthat assures us that “as a Catholic,” he expects “the plot to ultimately fail; where the pope and the historic faith…

Park51 and the Ground Liberals Are Forced to
Fight On

By Sarah Posner

…inciples so it’s kind of important when you see a poll that says a growing number of Americans think you might be a Muslim. The President continues to tell everyone he’s a Christian but yet the number rises. See that? Which came first, the thought he was a Muslim or the lack of trust? If he is a Muslim, he can’t be trusted? Or if you can’t trust him, he must be a Muslim? In any case, Obama strained mightily to placate the likes of Graham and Brody…

What Fidel Castro’s Death Means for LGBT Rights in Cuba and More, in This Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…as been a success story, writes Sieff, with the HIV/AIDS rate dropping from 12 percent to 5 percent since 2002 while the number of people receiving treatment has more than doubled in five years to over 700,000. But the new anti-gay crackdown could frighten people away from receiving treatment. Even though Tanzania’s penal code refers to homosexuality as a “gross indecency,” the government had long permitted organizations to help gay men who had AI…

Data-Mining Denominations: Same-Sex Marriage Edition

By Daniel Schultz

…people are by intensity, measured with the simple hack of subtracting the number of people Strongly Opposed to same-sex marriage from the number Strongly In Favor. Not surprisingly, since the Unitarian-Universalists only had 6 percent opposed, their position on the chart hardly budged at all. Other groups traveled a little more. Mainline Baptists, for example, strongly disapprove just a little more than they strongly approve. Evangelical Baptists…

Jonestown at 40: The Real Conspiracy Is More Disturbing Than the Theories

By Rebecca Moore

…Americans that occurred in Jonestown, Guyana, 40 years ago on November 18, 1978. STAND (Scientologists Taking Action Against Discrimination) published a four-part series that presents its best evidence for asserting that those deaths were mass murder rather than collective suicide, as initially reported in the news media. While Scientology may have a stake in how this story is told, the series actually raises two important questions. First, how i…

ABC’s Hit Sitcom Black-ish Does God, Pushes Theological Respectability

By Anthony B. Pinn

…ican American communities a disservice and fails to consider why a growing number are shifting away from belief— a shift that is tied to a long history of African Americans challenging belief in God. This narrowing of African American’s opinions on belief misses an important point. “Free thought,” in a variety of forms, has a presence in African American life that is centuries old. To question or deny God is as African American as is embracing the…

Rome Has Spoken and Rome Is Finished: The Vatican’s Sexual Abuse Summit ‘Failed Miserably’

By Mary E. Hunt

…ed minors and some covered it up. What’s so mysterious about that? A large number of minors have been sexually abused by a large number of clerics. Period. Full stop. It’s simply the beginning of a hideous story that includes the abuse of seminarians, nuns and other women, children of priests, and more, all of whom merit summits of their own. Francis’ discussion of power fell flat. He claimed that the sexual abuse of minors is an abuse of power. H…