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Why Even Progressive Christianity Must Own Its Complicity in Anti-LGBT Violence

By Layton E. Williams

…dominant narrative still suggests that queerness and Christianity are incompatible. As a lifelong Christian and now a pastor, I know that church can be an environment of love, acceptance, and belonging. As a queer person, I also know what it means to struggle under the fear of damnation and rejection by both God and those I love. From my vantage point as a faith leader in the largely affirming PCUSA, I recognize a tendency in progressive Christian…

Census Reveals Gay People are Shockingly… Normal

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ch, showed that gay people were even slightly interested in marrying their parents. Heck, most gay people would just love to have a relationship with their parents, but many of them remain estranged because of anti-gay crusaders like Dolan who have spread the lie that being gay is somehow akin to wanting to marry a parent, a dog, or a piece of furniture. But, as more and more lesbians and gay men raising children move into the neighborhoods of sub…

Will the Pope’s Woman Problem Alienate Young Catholics?

By Patricia Miller

…o Know.” [Full disclosure: I moderated a panel on the church and sex.] The participants, many of them long-time social justice activists, were generally grateful for Francis’ strong language on economic inequality and environmental degradation. However, they decried the pope’s blind spots when it comes to women, fearing that they will perpetuate a number of injustices and lead to an exodus from the church—particularly among millennials. The forum,…

Trump is a Nightmare, Sure, But Can He Actually Do Anything?

By Sunnivie Brydum

…emented. Crucially, though, each person also drew an implicit line between panic and despair—the former functions as motivation and an often effective call to action, while the latter makes action feel impossible, or worse, useless. Despite grave assessments of the state of American democracy, each of the experts also expressed hope, and a belief that individual citizens, united in a struggle against oppressive political forces, can change the cou…

Trump’s “Muslim Ban” A Gift to Terrorists

By Ali Olomi

…5 Thomas Jefferson even hosted an Iftar dinner in the White House. Muslims participated in the Civil War and ran businesses as far West as Arizona. After the disintegration of the Mughal and Ottoman Empire, immigration from Muslim-majority countries increased. Islam is part of the religious fabric of America. Islam is American. Yet, with a stroke of a pen, Donald Trump made Islam a foreign threat needing extreme “vetting.” Donald Trump and ISIS ag…

A ‘Pro-Life’ Buttigieg Ambush, Trump’s Corrupt Counsel, and More

By Daniel Schultz

…were willing to accept the support of “people like me” in the upcoming campaign, reviving the party’s big tent approach on the divisive issue. “I’m not going to try to earn your vote by tricking you,” the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., told her. “I am pro-choice, and I believe that a woman ought to be able to make that decision. “The best I can offer is that if we can’t agree on where to draw the line, the next best thing we can do is agree on…

Risky Business: The Pitfalls at the Corner of Church & Wall Street

By Elizabeth Drescher

…er of projects through MicroPlace, an online micro-financing subsidiary of PayPal, with investments of as little as 20 dollars that help low income entrepreneurs in Texas, women merchants in Azerbaijan, the rural farmers of Cambodia, and so on, earning a return of 0.5% to 4.5% over 2-3 years. Not bad. Really? As a person of faith, am I supposed to be earning even nominal interest on the efforts of a women’s beading cooperative in India? Should I b…

A Twisted Love Story: How American Evangelicals Helped Make Putin’s Russia and How Russia Became the Darling of the American Right

By Katherine Kelaidis

…allying cry for the American Right in general and American evangelicals in particular, who made it their mission to save “Godless Russia,” seemingly unaware that before 1917, it had, in fact, been “Holy Mother Russia.” In a pattern we’ve seen repeated again and again among American evangelicals before and since, they understood the persecution of the local indigenous Christian population and the suppression of a region’s historical Christian insti…

The Story Behind the Catholic Church’s Stunning Reversal on Contraception

By Patricia Miller

…’s incongruence on the issue of family planning dated back to 1930 and the papal encyclical Casti Connubi (On Christian Marriage), which was written to address the growing acceptance of birth control throughout the Western world. The tipping point was reached in 1930, when the Anglican Church officially approved the use of birth control by married couples. Other Protestant denominations soon followed, signaling that contraceptives had gained moral…

LGBT Christians Respond to Southern Baptists’ Call For Kindness, Understanding

By Mike Greer

…s and LGBT advocates did meet privately with the same number of conference participants for dialogue on Monday evening, though they agreed that they wouldn’t comment about it afterward. In addition, Matthew Vines, author of God and the Gay Christian, met privately and off-the-record with Al Mohler during the conference. ThinkProgress also interacted with clergy and laity in those public sessions. It will be fascinating to see how dialogue between…