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Israel Claims Holy Sites, Reignites Religious Flashpoint

By Orly Halpern

…fter passing through a military checkpoint. Christians and Muslims are not welcome. As an occupying power, Israel is required by international law to preserve the status quo and to act for the benefit of the local civilian population. But Israel claimed security reasons for its Jewish-only access. “These are Muslim holy sites,” explained Sheikh Taysir Tamimi, head of the Palestinian Shari’a Islamic courts. Tamimi remembers praying in the Bilal Mos…

Confession Fail: iPhone App Controversy Muddies the Sacramental Waters

By Elizabeth Drescher

…clesiastically robust Penance app has managed. (Note to developers: You’re welcome.) Nonetheless, even more careful, socially-sensitive design cannot be guaranteed to save the doctrinal day in a world defined much more by improvisation than by obedience. That is, regardless of how developers intend for an application to be used, the very nature of the culture shaped by digital social media allows that users will come up with new, creative, and, in…

Condoms and Common Sense

By Frances Kissling

…other sexually transmitted infections than is an exclusive focus on condom promotion. Regrettably, however, many scientists, HIV prevention educators, and AIDS activists are so fixed on condom promotion that they do not give due attention to the risk avoidance that is possible to achieve through abstinence outside marriage and mutual, lifelong fidelity within marriage.” Who, one asks, are these scientists who believe in the “exclusive focus on con…

Religion is Not about Belief: Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God

By Brian McGrath Davis

…zation took center stage, preparing the way for a modern period that would welcome both humanistic individualism and the eventual triumph of reason and science. The early modern world was astir with cultural renewal, technological innovation, and religious reformation. The printing press captured the oral tradition on the written page, and the printed word became a matter of depersonalized, static precision. Henceforth, all religious quarrels (bot…

Lying about Santa: The Irrelevance of Proof to the Holiday Spirit

By Nathan Schneider

…very idea of finding a tent in the house was so foreign, and truthfully so welcome, that it could only come from a source that was Wholly Other. Irrespective of anything that might be regarded as proof, at least until my father announced plans for an upcoming camping trip, that novelty and unforeseen possibility had no other name for me than Santa. “Sorry, I didn’t really get to talking about God,” Hook told me when I went up to congratulate him a…

Keep it Catholic, Catholics: A Response to Michael Sean Winters’ Attack on Frances Kissling in America

By Mary E. Hunt

…ted to do. This is what Catholic looks like in the twenty-first century. I welcome and respect such transparent statements from other Catholics so we know who stands where. But such statements are rare when the risk of being labeled “not Catholic,” or “not approved by the Vatican,” or for politicians, being denied Communion, is all too real. I am an active participant in contemporary intellectual and activist work. But I will not engage, especiall…

As Problems for Pregnant People Increase, Catholic Bishops Claim They’re Heroes For Ending Abortion Rights

By Mary E. Hunt

…“the unborn.” That tells a pregnant person all they need to know about the welcome they won’t receive. What would motivate someone to darken that door for counseling, access to reproductive options, or material support to live out their choice? Who’s kidding whom to say that the bishops, who promote the Hyde Amendment and oppose the Affordable Care Act, are serious when they say “our society can and must protect and care for both women and their c…

Trump’s Fear and Loathing Won’t Silence The Nation’s Sole LGBT Muslim Organization

By Omar Sarwar

…ckling the “root causes of oppression, including misogyny and xenophobia,” promoting greater acceptance of sexual and gender diversity, and helping build a practice of Islam grounded in “inclusion, justice, and equality.” The organization’s resistance to the twin evils of anti-gay sentiment and racialized anti-Muslim bigotry has at once preceded and been magnified by the November 2016 election. LGBT Muslims have focused mainly on domestic challeng…

Atheists Battle for High School Clubs

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…high school clubs. Next up: atheists. The Secular Student Alliance, which promotes atheism and humanism with chapters at more than 200 colleges, is sending in reinforcements for teen free-thinkers—a push to launch 50 new high school clubs. Godless teens want the same social benefits that evangelical teens find at the annual “See you at the pole” flagpole prayer events at thousands of schools every September, and the court-sanctioned afterschool B…

Burning Down the Temple: Religion and Irony in Black Rock City

By Sarah M. Pike

…sty naked couple, asked me to get out of my car and embraced me, shouting “Welcome Home!” I had crossed the threshold. Next step was to head for my campsite on “Liminal,” the outermost street of the semi-circular Black Rock City. For many Burners, this pilgrimage to the desert is the closest they come to participating in anything like a religious community. They prepare for it all year, gathering costumes and camp decorations, assembling sculpture…