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Facebook Doesn’t Kill Churches, Churches Kill Churches

By Elizabeth Drescher

…f college. Thin connections in face-to-face settings are not magically transformed by technology. Other data suggests deeper reasons for believers and seekers’ abandonment of the institutional church, much of it linked to an understanding of the “social” that has more to do with involvement in practices of compassion, justice, and stewardship than it does with mere interpersonal entertainment. An extensive body of data on growing participation in…

‘Dog-Cat’ Incumbent Reelected to Texas Board of Education

By Lauri Lebo

…ve another four years on the Texas Board of Education last week. Mercer, a San Antonio Republican, remains one of at least five far-right conservatives who will be reviewing new material over the next two years. Nonetheless, the election results spell cautiously good news. The far-right Christian voting bloc on the 15-member board has dwindled. Voters have rejected several of them, including Don McLeroy, who was the chief architect behind the rewr…

Gingrich and Hagee, End-Times Buddies

By Sarah Posner

…nfolding in the Middle East, Newt Gingrich’s planned visit to John Hagee’s San Antonio church offers a window into how Republican candidates re-tool apocalyptic theology as foreign policy, for mass consumption. The pair have long been fellow travelers; despite Hagee’s history of anti-Catholic statements and Gingrich’s recent conversion to Catholicism, they have both orbited the same nexus of neoconservative foreign policy and apocalyptic biblical…

Isaac Asimov’s Niece Covers the Rapture

By Lauri Lebo

It’s fitting that Nanette Asimov, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and Isaac Asimov’s niece, covered the failing of the Rapture for her newspaper. She details the story of a man who drove across the country with his family from Maryland to celebrate the event in the empty parking lot of the Family Radio station in Oakland, California, where this whole ridiculousness began. There is no gloating, or smugness in Asimov’s words, only a simple recou…

How Evangelicals Pick Presidents

By Sarah Posner

…GOP president. In his hagiographic The Faith of George W. Bush, Stephen Mansfield reports on a 1999 meeting between Bush, then (like Perry) Governor of Texas, Karl Rove, and Robison, after which Robison concluded that he “had just spoken to the future president of the United States, a man who would preserve freedom.” Robison then introduced Bush to other evangelical, charismatic, and Pentecostal leaders in a series of meetings, where pastors laid…

Lesbian Nuns: Still Immodest After All These Years

By Susan Henking

…the vantage point of her retirement from Wesleyan as Professor Emerita. Susan Henking: As you know, I teach your 1986 book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy and am amazed that the 25th anniversary of its publication is already upon us. In some ways, given that you were writing about the 17th century, 25 years is just a moment. Yet, much has changed in our views of sex and sexuality in the intervening decades. How does…

How Breivik’s “Cultural Analysis” is Drawn from the “Christian Worldview”

By Sarah Posner

…nti-communist crusader whose Summit Ministries has been influential to thousands of evangelicals, teaches this cohesive ideology known as the “Christian worldview.” As I wrote last year: Noebel, or “Doc” as his devotees call him, is the doyen of Summit Ministries, the Manitou Springs, Colorado-based institution founded in 1962 to teach evangelical teens about anti-God, anti-Christian threats to the “Christian worldview” and the American way of lif…

Rick Perry’s Jesus Imperative: A Report from Saturday’s Mega-Rally

By Sarah Posner

…the answers. Only the Lord does.” Joyce Thompson, who came to Houston from San Antonio with a friend, echoed a persistent theme to me over breakfast at our hotel: that Christianity is somehow under siege from enemies. Thompson, who described herself as a 66-year-old Tea Partier, tearfully said, “I can’t understand people who want to destroy our country.” When I asked her who those people might be, she replied, “It’s a Muslim thing. It’s Satan agai…

Polygamist Warren Jeffs Convicted of Sexual Assault

By Anthea Butler

…5 year-old girls who were “spiritually married” to him. The trial, held in San Angelo, Texas, was short but disturbing, with audiotapes and photographs of Jeffs’ crimes presented to the jury. During the trial, Jeffs fired his defense team, and defended himself with rambling missives and an affidavit he claimed came from God. Often, he just sat in silence. The jury verdict came quickly after hearing particularly sordid testimony, including the test…

Church and State in Mexico: A Political Party Wavers on Women’s Rights

By Ruth Samuelson

…esident Luis Echeverría’s leadership, the government unabashedly and successfully introduced the country to contraception in the 1970s. Echeverría believed that, without family planning, Mexico’s birth rate would cripple its economic growth and result in heavy unemployment in coming years. With slogans like “paternidad responsible” (responsible parenthood) and “la familia pequeña vive mejor” (small families live better), the government always fram…