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What Irish Marriage Vote Means for Catholic Church; The Lonely Fight for Equality in Belize; Progress and Backlash in Tunisia; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…carefully planned and executed campaign by activist groups seemed as much about putting behind a past entrenched in theocracy and tradition as it was about marriage for gays and lesbians. And it underscored how different Ireland is today for the young, who turned out in droves to vote. In a little more than a generation, Ireland has both distanced itself from the church and sharpened its secular identity…. “The church needs to take a reality chec…

Ex-Gay Conversion Therapy: Choosing Religion Over Sex

By Lynne Gerber

…to take seriously when revisiting this topic: what ex-gay ministries talk about (and don’t talk about) when they talk about change. What counts as change in the ex-gay context is broad and often looks quite different from what cultural outsiders might expect. The NPR story left out the fact that Wyler was married and had children at the time of his conversion therapy; not living as a single gay man in L.A. making a rational decision between gay l…

Catholic Church Ordained Women Before, Can Do it Again

By Phyllis Zagano

…tined to image Christ. What alternative title would you give the book? How about: Women Deacons are a Thing of the Past? How do you feel about the cover? I think it is just lovely. I especially like the way the scroll design has a heart at its center. That is what the diaconate is about—spreading the love of God and neighbor. What’s your next book? I am planning a book about the works of the women in history who ministered as deacons. But, before…

Putting the “Protest” Back in Protestant: Reclaiming the Spirit of Resistance

By Peter Laarman

…ral autonomy of each human person. • Modesty in making any positive claims about God’s nature and will (Marilynne Robinson writes extensively and powerfully about how the doctrine of divine sovereignty necessarily involves due modesty in regard to the truth claims of one’s own beliefs). • Resistance as a way of life: recognition of the flawed nature of all existing political and social arrangements (for those Protestants who are actually and activ…

Why Didn’t Trump Lie About His Bible?

By John Stoehr

…f white evangelical Christians. But not much has been said of what he said about the Bible he was holding, other than the completely obvious: that Donald Trump, a thrice-married womanizer subject to serial accusations of sexual assault, cares nothing for scripture, doesn’t even know how to talk about the Bible with knowledge, much less reverence. A reporter asked: “Is that your Bible?” Trump answered: “It’s a Bible.” Other than some social-media t…

DeSantis is a No-Show, the Right’s ‘Secret Sauce,’ and Final Thoughts on Pray Vote Stand

By PRA Staff

…. Two people stand on opposite sides of a six (or is it a nine?) and argue about which number it is. Backholm initially takes the analogy in an expected direction: the two people disagree about what number it is because they’re looking at it from fundamentally different perspectives. Then he gives us his biblical worldview spin: the person who’s right about the number is the person who knows who made the number and for what purpose. Neither person…

The Secret Life of Mormons: As Told by Prodigal Daughter, Novelist Judith Freeman

By Joanna Brooks

…man. For a long time, I stole things in my life. And I really had to think about that later. I had to ask myself, “What sort of person does that make me?” In the middle of Latter Days, I write about how stealing anything from anyone makes you feel poor, that as long as you feel you must have something but you can’t afford it, it will forever continue to cement in you this feeling of poverty. Those kinds of realizations can’t come about without fra…

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

By Sarah Posner

…benefit the nation as a whole.” Muslims + The Left = Sedition “Shari’ah is about power, not about faith,” Gaffney told an audience of mostly Congressional staffers at the Capitol Visitors’ Center last year, “If you actually can break the code that way, far from being entitled to the protections of our Constitution under the principle of freedom of religion, it is actually a seditious assault on our Constitution which we are obliged to prosecute, n…

What’s Missing From Popular Discussions of Today’s Christian Nationalism?

By Katherine Stewart

…my commitment to building bridges in the African American community is not about politics,” he said as dozens of attendees rushed toward the stage to get selfies with the speakers. “This is about the Kingdom of God.” Other speakers and panelists at the Road to Majority convention invoked the language and goals of Seven Mountains dominionism as if it were simply shorthand for the Republican agenda. “You got to put on the full armor of God,” said Fl…

Robert Bellah’s Powerful Legacy: A Mixed Blessing for Religious Studies?

By Ivan Strenski

…g. What does the success of courses like the Viet Nam War course tell us — about ourselves, about the character of the university? I have no answers. However, I am convinced that we need to ponder the lessons provoked by Bellah’s views and the celebrated success of Capps’ course. Those who champion what they call the “academic” or “scientific” study of religion need to confront the facts of student interest as represented in the case of Capps’ cou…