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Hajj Journal: Using the Toilet at the Grand Mosque

By Amina Wadud

…court up to the second floor. From there, the double escalators from each floor rose up to the third floor. There is also a partial 4th floor; more of a balcony over the deepest part of the mosque. Not a full circumabulation, so you cannot do tawaf from there, but you can do saiy. Fortunately for me, this toilet visit was from a place just next to the green line. The green line marks a distance in saiy where the pilgrim is supposed to run, becaus…

Are You Rapture Ready?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…n exactly 7,000 years from the date that God first warned people about the flood. He said the flood happened in 4990 B.C., on what would have been May 21 in the modern calendar. God gave Noah one week of warning. Since one day equals 1,000 years for God, that means there was a 7,000-year interval between the flood and rapture. “We hope that anyone would get a Bible out and try and prove that this is wrong,” he said. I suspect the advent of May 22,…

‘Heretics’ or ‘Atheists’? A Response

By Rachel Ozanne

…. Simply identifying as an atheist at first felt uncomfortable to me for a number of reasons. All of my family members remained Christian, so it was easier for me to tell them that I was “searching,” or at least agnostic, rather than atheist. Additionally, I wasn’t sure that the label applied to me. Finally, now, as a historian of religion, when I introduce myself to strangers, they inevitably ask me about my religious commitments. When I explain…

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

By John Stoehr

…commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection; the disproportionate number of Covid deaths in states run by Republican governors; this week’s shooting massacre in San Jose, Calif., and every other one like it; and, let’s see, what else? Well, feel free at the end of this piece to add your own examples. There are plenty more. All have in common the political concept that God divided the world between the elected and the unelected, that is, b…

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

…cognized and protected by the Canadian legal system.” Africa: A call for reflection on advocacy structures and strategies Last week Pambazuka News published “Where do we go from here? A call for critical reflection on queer/LGBTIA+ activism in Africa,” by Liesl Theron, John McAllister, and Mariam Armisen. From the introduction: In the informal discussions that happen at the margins of African queer/LGBTIA+ workshops and conferences and in activist…

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

By Tony Keddie

…mp retweeted a curious meme of himself playing the violin back in March, a number of critics mocked him for acknowledging that he is like Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burns—a fiery critique of him golfing while numerous Americans, especially poor and racially marginalized Americans—died from COVID-19. Reed couldn’t associate Trump with a notorious persecutor of Christians, so he opted for Tiberius instead. This is an undeniable historical er…

Was Ghana Anti-Gay Scare Just Politics?

By Warren Throckmorton

…ed “to get rid of these people in the society.” Some observers believe the number of sexual minorities may have been inflated in order to whip up opposition to homosexuality which could advance the standing of conservative politicians. Graham Knight, a British blogger living in Ghana, recently wrote that the claim of 8,000 sexual minorities has little support in fact. Knight concluded, in a blog post titled Did Ghana register 8000 homosexuals? The…

By The Numbers: Jeb Opposes Francis on Climate Change at His Peril

By Daniel Schultz

…happening, or if it is, it’s natural causes, or they’re just not sure. The numbers attributing warming to human activity rise among moderates and liberals, of course, but they’re not going to vote for Jeb anyway. There is one number Bush might want to worry about, though: 85. That’s the percent of Hispanic Catholics who think climate change is a real problem: For a guy who’s been touting his potential to draw Spanish-speaking voters into the Repub…

Episcopal Conference Lives Up to Episcopal Jokes

By Julie Ingersoll

…the height of the battling, that it was all not such a big deal, that the number of dissidents was actually quite small and that he thought his church would be better off once they were gone. Indeed, according to Wikipedia there are over 7,000 Episcopal congregations in the US with over 2 million members, though the significance of that number is unclear since, as the priest in the church where I was baptized once teased me: “when you’re baptiz…

Let’s Get Lost: Mapping Religion in the 21st Century

By Spencer Dew

…ing the names of organizations with U.S. cities (for instance, Boca Raton, Florida, is flagged for “Al Qaeda”). The source for this map’s data, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, runs a more comprehensive map on their own website, plotting “Court Cases” that “involve terrorist plots or financial and other forms of material support for terrorists” as well as “Mosques and Islamic centers listed at one time were home to radical clerics or to con…