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Pope’s US Visit Provokes Intense Attention; New Vatican Book on Man-Woman Complementarity & New Int’l Report on Christian Role Models for LGBT Equality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…nt Families, Same Love” have been sent to every school in Ireland, show “a number of families from different backgrounds – from same-sex parents to single parents, from grandparents raising a child to a childless couple with a dog.” The poster is meant to help teachers create inclusive classrooms and deter bullying. But the conservative Catholic Iona Institute, which led opposition to the marriage equality referendum, is arguing that religious sch…

Church and State in Japan: The Case of the Yasukuni Shrine

By Mark R. Mullins

…rined and deified, and are now worshipped as a kami (god), along with the Class-A war criminals enshrined several decades ago. Over the years, a number of individuals have made personal visits to the Yasukuni Shrine and requested that enshrinement be cancelled and the names of their family dead be removed from the shrine register. In addition to appeals from Japanese families, there are also Koreans and Taiwanese who have been dismayed and angered…

Mormonism’s Black Issues

By Joanna Brooks

…eph Smith Jr., and the subsequent exodus to Utah are frequently recounted. Last November’s protests directed at Mormon temples and wardhouses after the election only confirmed and intensified Mormons’ deeply-held sense of marginalization and persecution. Elder Oaks’ October 13 analogy between African Americans and Mormons mobilized this sense of persecution and galvanized Mormon same-sex marriage opponents, just as Maine’s Proposition 1 campaign t…

Cruz and the Evangelical Illusion

By Sarah Posner

…“We brought them with no expectations and we were highly pleased with the number who decided Ted is the right man to be of the president of the U.S.” When judging these statements (particularly the words “very diverse,” “significant standing” and “the number”), keep in mind that Barton is known (among evangelicals) for playing fast and loose with facts. Three years ago, the evangelical publisher Thomas Nelson halted publication of one of Barton’s…

Who Bombed the Boston Marathon?

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…a report issued by the reliable Southern Poverty Law Center last year, the number of extremist Patriot groups has skyrocketed. Only 149 groups existed before Obama was elected in 2008. In 2012 the number had expanded to 1,360. Not all are plotting terrorist attacks, of course. But some are. In September 2012, Daryl Johnson, a terrorist analyst for the US Department of Homeland Security testified before a Senate committee that there was an “upsurge…

It’s Not About Cake: Anti-Gay Vendors Want a Constitutional Right to Discriminate

By Sunnivie Brydum

…e-providers like bakeries and florists, dress-shops, hair salons, and “any number” of other businesses could claim that their services are in fact a form of constitutionally protected artistic practice. “The claim at issue here sounds as if the business can put up a sign in its window that says, ‘We sell cakes for heterosexuals only,’” Melling explained, taking ADF’s logic to its natural conclusion. “There’s an immediate consequence of that, and t…

It’s Not Me, It’s You: Catholic Values Dumping Trump

By Patricia Miller

…in a vestigial memory of the vehement anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant backlash their grandparents and great-grandparents faced. They may be particularly turned off by Trump’s promises of mass deportation and his categorization of immigrants as rapists and murderers. But it’s also possible that the great Catholic stampede of 2016 isn’t exactly what it seems. Writing in New York, Ed Kilgore notes that the PPRI poll may be an outlier, as it showed a…

Dispelling the Zombie Myth of White Evangelical Support for Trump

By Robert P. Jones

…lical Protestants, America’s most church-going religious group, across the last decade. There has been a modest seven percentage-point uptick in the proportion of White evangelicals who seldom or never attend church (17% in 2023 to 24% in 2023), but these numbers are far below the proportion of the general population who have opted out of religious services (54%). And while there has been some fluctuation among the “super attenders,” those who att…

Why Religious Exemptions Matter

By Sarah Posner

…le for the exemption. This will, Catholics for Choice argues, increase the number of employees of Catholic organizations who would be deprived of contraception coverage, even if they aren’t Catholic themselves (or are Catholics who dissent from the church’s opposition to birth control). HHS notes in its rule that “the exemption should not exclude group health plans of religious entities that would qualify for the exemption but for the fact that,…

Gambian Prez Rails Against Gay ‘Evil Empire’; Irish Priest Comes Out During Mass; Trans Talk on Tunisian TV Sparks Debate; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…d this: An April 2013 survey by the Social Weather Stations found that the number of Filipinos identifying themselves as Catholics fell to 81 percent from 88 percent in 1997 and one in every 11 Catholics has considered leaving the church. Weekly church attendance among adults dropped to 37 percent in 2013 from 53 percent in 2006. There are signs that church attendance has ticked up in anticipation of the visit. “The line to a blockbuster movie? Ho…