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Good News: Religious Outreach Works On Vaccine Hesitancy. Bad News: We Need It.

By Daniel Schultz

…s to say they’ve been vaccinated or intend to be. This could stem from any number of sources: more skepticism of authority, less familiarity with the medical system and particularly the importance of vaccination (today’s twenty-somethings aren’t old enough to remember whooping cough, measles or polio), or because the threat of Covid doesn’t seem as relevant to them as it does other generations. There are other surprises in the study. One of the mi…

The Religious Right and the Tea Party on “Education Choice”

By Julie Ingersoll

…e open to anyone who wishes to attend, though there will be a limit on the number of schools (no more than ten in the next decade) and the number of students enrolled. Opponents see charter schools as quasi-privatized schools (and also fear that this is a first step toward further privatization). They see even these limited charter schools as a threat to funding for public education—especially in these difficult budget years where public education…

Pope Denounces Gender Colonization; Indonesian Court Considers Islamist Request To Criminalize Homosexuality; Egypt’s Grand Mufti Says No One Has Right to Harm Homosexuals; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…er. The government’s Ethics Minister Simon Lokodo reportedly threatened to mobilize a mob if the event went forward. Earlier in the week police raided a gay pride event taking place at a club. From Human Rights Watch: The police locked the gates of the club, arrested more than 16 people – the majority of whom are Ugandan LGBT rights activists – and detained hundreds more for over 90 minutes, beating and humiliating people; taking pictures of lesbi…

PCUSA’s Nod to “Traditional” Marriage Understandable, but Not Accurate

By William E. Smith

…ies, many Christians rejected the validity of marrying more than once. The most famous—and extreme—example of this position was Tertullian. In his early third-century treatise Monogamy, Tertullian insists that it is unchristian to remarry after the death of a spouse because Christians, in a sense, survive death and thus their marriages do not really end. Those who do remarry become polygamous. By remarrying, the living spouse—figured by Tertullian…

A Peek Inside the ‘Onion’ of Scientology

By Kristin Rawls

…scuss and debate the tenets so that the religion evolves as all faiths do. Mormons are a great example. There are practicing Mormons who have written [critical] books about Joseph Smith and the history of their church. They have intellectuals who have picked apart the theology, and they have giant Mormon universities. The Church of Scientology has none of that. If it could become more like that, more power to it. Then it’s a real religion, and it…

Evangelical Pastor Argues for Full LGBT Inclusion: “I Think It’s Inevitable”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ne protestant denominations, which have more institutional restraints. The more autonomous congregations will outpace them in acceptance. That’s going to be the big surprise. How soon do you predict that? If there are congregations like ours that can demonstrate that you can survive financially, then I think there will immediately be a small, steady trickle of congregations moving in this direction and that will develop into a stream. Certainly, i…

Naked Jihad

By Kate Blanchard

…ld soon be feeling the need to leave her home country. Not surprisingly, a number of Western women felt moved to show their support for Amina. An international movement called Femen staged bare-breasted protests in European cities, in which the writings on their chests echoed Amina’s, along with “Freedom for women” and “Fuck your morals.” (Be warned: photos contain nudity and strong language.) But Femen did not have the last word. Almost immediat…

Scottish Episcopal Church Angers Conservative Anglicans With Embrace of Same-Sex Marriage; and more in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e celebration in Iqaluit, Nunavut. From the CBC’s coverage last June: “The more we dug, the more complicated and layered it got,” added Woods. “You can’t have Pride in Nunavut without really retracing the history of colonization, residential schools and Inuit being taken off land and put into settled communities. And then there’s Christianization and the writing system being created to teach people the Bible. There’s all sorts of things that reall…

The Internet Is Not Killing Religion, Religion is Killing Religion

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ecessarily caused by) religion and to mitigate its associated harms (even if also accruing harms of its own). No—alas, I must say it again—the internet is not killing religion. But it does seem to more and more people that, cries of its own victimization notwithstanding, religion has killed off more than its share of pipers over time. How about we look into that?…

Was Ghana Anti-Gay Scare Just Politics?

By Warren Throckmorton

…support in fact. Knight concluded, in a blog post titled Did Ghana register 8000 homosexuals? The facts behind the hype that: the real story is of a rather low-key workshop that has been sensationalized by the press, possibly with the collusion of a local doctor. The press reports are designed to create fear as are the unrepresentative group of Muslims claiming an imminent Sodom and Gomorrah for Africa. While the accuracy of the original story is…