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Does It Matter If Islam Is A Religion? An American Ahmadi Explains The Effects Of Religious Discrimination

By Daniel Schultz

…roup, and proudly displayed medals from the group at Trump’s inauguration. Most relevant, though, despite disavowals of animus toward Islam, Gorka has described it more in terms of a totalitarian ideology than a complex, diverse, global religion. That assessment echoes a common view among right-wing nationalists, including administration figures like former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and senior political advisor Steve Bannon. It’s wor…

Why It’s Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…us as this so people know you can’t read the story literally. What did you most enjoy about writing this book? The most fun I had in the first part of the book was developing the characters that Matthew puts into the genealogy—the tainted women. That’s not an accident. Nobody reads the genealogy. That’s the most boring part of the Bible and yet the clue to the virgin birth is in that story. God can raise up holiness out of any human distortion is…

From A Belize Jungle, A Look At Creationist “Outreach” in Vancouver

By Lauri Lebo

…sh and making the United States look stupid before the international media. AiG does this every four years and claims that it saved 250 souls at the Athens Olympics. Since in most countries, people accept the reality of evolution, the rest of the western world, except for Turkey, will laugh at us….

Good Mourning Modeled by Chaplains and Clergy at the Oakland Ghost Ship Fire

By Kaya Oakes

…of adults in California attend some form of weekly religious worship, and most of the victims of the Ghost Ship fire were in their 20s and 30s, making them statistically more likely to be agnostic, atheist, or another of the identities often collected under the category of Nones. The fact that most of the people on site were artists, and many of them also LGBTQ, meant that any chaplains present needed to be sensitive to the possibility that their…

Sean Feucht’s New Year’s Rockin’ Superspreader Revival is a ‘Tepid and Meager’ Effort at Racial Reconciliation

By Isaiah Murtaugh

…s. And while courts have given credibility to aspects of Feucht’s argument—most notably in a series of recent Supreme Court decisions in favor of houses of worship opposed to local restrictions—Feucht himself seems to have a higher calling in mind: religious revival. His personal website sells “Revival or Bust” T-shirts, and his social media is chock full of references to the late 1960s “Jesus People” movement that reset the cultural direction of…

Is Herman Cain’s Long-Running Minstrel Show Finally at an End?

By Anthea Butler

…ing this, but the way that black Baptists deal with sexual sin and the way most conservative white evangelicals deal with sexual sin are very different. Compare what happened to Ted Haggard, Jim Baker, or Jimmy Swaggart with Henry Lyons, Eddie Long and Jamal Bryant. Ted Haggard was ousted from his congregation, and went on an odyssey before returning to Colorado Springs to launch a smaller church than his empire at New Life. Lyons went to prison (…

Vatican Instruction on Cremation Rankles Many, But Give it a Second Look

By Karen E. Park

…ng better to do than to dream up new ways to torment the faithful. But the most common objection, the one expressed more than any other, seemed to be about who controls the body. One commenter in the National Catholic Reporter put it this way: “The issue is choice. This choice should be up to the person to make before death, or for the family itself to make. The hierarchy is trying to impose its will on people instead of respecting their choices a…

High Ark: A Geologist on the True Meaning of Noah’s Flood

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…s that have taken place all over the world throughout history. And perhaps most intriguing, he’s willing to talk about science as a human endeavor. I spoke to Montgomery by phone to find out more about these surprising aspects of his story. ______________ BWL: You write in your introduction that you started out to write a more traditional debunking of creationism’s flood geology, from your perspective as a geologist. And you ended up with somethin…

When Mormons Mobilize: Anti-Gay Marriage Prop. 8 Effort ‘Outed’?

By Joanna Brooks

…nto the phrase “plausible deniability” as an “explosive” indictment of the Mormon Church’s allegedly behind-the-scenes relationship to the Proposition 8 campaign. But to Mormons in California (both those who supported the Yes on 8 campaign and those who opposed it), the relationship between the church and the Proposition 8 campaign has always been undeniable. Mormons Account for 75% of Donations The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has…

Obama to Cave on Bush Tax Cuts: Letter to the Washingtonians, Chapter 1

By Daniel Schultz

…in a poor land. In 2002 and 2003, the grim infection of another war became more and more certain. I did not support this war. It was wrong, and I said so from my pulpit. I paid the price: enraged members of the congregation were certain that I had dishonored the troops, that President Bush was the hand appointed by God to lead the nation to safety, that no Christian could oppose this war to protect our civilization. Days after the first troops pou…