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Right Wingers Say “Gay” is Out, But Try Putting “Unnatural Vice” On a Bumper Sticker

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ked than I am that this crowd denies the existence of the many gay and lesbian Christians who go to church each Sunday (and perhaps on Wednesdays and whenever the church is open). The good news here is that “gay” is apparently no longer a strong enough slur that a completely new frame is having to be set for the debate. But “unnatural vice” just doesn’t seem to roll off the tongue like “gay.” In addition, “unnatural vice” would seem to be too br…

Trump with back to camera stands before a frenzied crowd with raised fist.

With ‘Vermin’ Remark Trump Crosses Fully into Nazi Territory

By Robert P. Jones

…Hitler-like. But I fear that our rightful reticence to invoke an inappropriate Nazi analogy has rendered us incapable of calling out instances of actual Nazi ideology. What we are hearing from Trump over the last few weeks are not Nazi-like statements, but outright Nazi sentiments. Lest you think I’m exaggerating, here are just a few selections from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf that are soberingly similar to Trump’s most recent rhetoric (You can sea…

Fasting and Faithy Friends of Convenience

By Sarah Posner

…on is even a question shows just how toothless the Democratic-religious alliance is (and, indeed, Obama’s alliance with other elements of his non-corporate base, to boot, but that’s another story). After all, the Democrats are the ones who reject hard-hearted conservative theocracy and embrace—Glenn Beck be damned—social justice religion, right? That a prominent liberal Washington insider and social justice-minded Catholic like Dionne has already…

Oklahoma Bill Would Violate Basic Freedoms, Rewrite the Ten Commandments

By Andrew L. Seidel

…. And then there are the many differences between various Jewish and Christian sects in how to number and interpret these different sets of commandments. All of this I explain in my book, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American. Seemingly small differences are magnified because Christianity has historically claimed to possess ultimate truth, so any deviation from an absolute truth is significant. Minor variations are further ma…

Are You Rapture Ready?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…date predicted on a van parked in a shopping center parking lot near Columbia, South Carolina months ago, so I suppose I’m already behind in my preparations. I count myself among the scoffers of second coming date-setting since Jesus himself said we won’t know the date or the time of his return. Evans is prepared with his answer to me and others who laugh off their efforts: “Sadly, only eight people survived the flood in Noah’s time,” he said. “Th…

‘Heretics’ or ‘Atheists’? A Response

By Rachel Ozanne

…nchard’s May 10 piece, “Coming Out As a Heretic.” I too grew up in a Christian family, and, despite very intense Christian devotion and deep soul- and scripture-searching, I “fell away” from the faith in my early twenties. I have been “unchurched” for about six years now and have often struggled to identify my current relationship to the Christian faith. Simply identifying as an atheist at first felt uncomfortable to me for a number of reasons. A…

What do the January 6 Commission, Covid Deaths and Gun Massacres All Have in Common? God’s Chosen

By John Stoehr

…e elected and the unelected, that is, between His chosen and everyone else deserving of eternal damnation. (They deserve what’s coming to them, in other words.) For the chosen, anything is possible. For God’s enemies, God’s law. All politics, all historical struggle over power and limited resources, can be seen through a lens in which everything begins with the chosen and ends with the chosen. It’s a closed circuit—politically, religiously, econom…

Competing Visions of Family & Freedom at UN; Methodists Try to Avoid Schism on Sexuality; Catholic Cardinal Denounces LGBT ‘Demonic Ideology’; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…to preserve the sanctity of a traditional family.” Georgia’s Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II welcomed what WCF says were “more than 2,000 delegates form more than 50 countries.” A WCF press release says Ilia “warned against attempts to re-define family.” Vladimir Putin’s allies have positioned the Russian Orthodox Church as the defender of Christian civilization, language echoed in Vasadze’s remarks, as described by WCF: Levan Vasadze welcomed the Wor…

The Wrong Emperor: Why Ralph Reed’s New Pro-Trump Book Distorts the Bible to Cast the President as Tiberius

By Tony Keddie

…indisputably immoral but not as obviously chosen by God as Cyrus, the Persian king described as “anointed” by God to restore Israel from exile in Isaiah 45. Cyrus has enjoyed wide appeal as a model for conservative evangelicals’ understanding of Trump as a Gentile despot sent to save Israel. The origin of this explanation is often attributed to the xenophobic dominionist Lance Wallnau. This link has been examined from multiple angles by scholars…

Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015) and the Rise of Extreme Evangelicalism

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…ition. The tag “extreme” is now ubiquitous: there are extreme sports Christians, extreme Christian clothes, and teen extreme youth camps, among others. But there is something here beyond sales and marketing. Muscular Christianity was about developing a muscular and masculine body that could protect and serve. Extreme Christianity is about pushing the individual body to its limits, with experiences marked by daring and adventure. If muscular Christ…