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Female Deacons: Pope Francis Walks It Back, Women Clergy Weigh In

By Kaya Oakes

…e ordination of a Roman Catholic woman. Last year, Father Jack McClure was sanctioned by San Francisco Archbishop Cordelione and prevented from saying mass for appearing at a women’s ordination gathering. Any Roman Catholic woman who pursues ordination in an independent Catholic Church (not considered to be in communion with Roman Catholic Church) is considered automatically excommunicated for breaking church law; members of the Roman Catholic Wom…

What the Hail: Satanists Got Busy in 2018

By Joseph Laycock

…orney Marc Randazza to represent them pro bono. Randazza has represented a number of far-right figures including Alex Jones, Mike Cernovich, and Andrew Anglin. TST-Santa Cruz announced their adoption of a local beach. Locals described being “shocked” that Satanists would clean up a beach but were not averse to the idea. Menstruatin’ with Satan art by Tina Scott. http://christina-scott.com TST-Arizona had a falling out with the local branch of the…

Bishops’ Attempt to Deny Communion to Biden Will Backfire Even More Spectacularly Than Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage

By Mary E. Hunt

…ve, by turns criminal, and, in recent decades, the reason former Catholics number as many as current Catholics in the US. For the bishops to pronounce who among the laity is worthy to receive communion is absurd. At most, such decisions are made pastorally and in private, on a case by case, diocese by diocese basis. But these days, with the institution mired in bankruptcies because of priests’ criminal conduct, costs and market share plunging beca…

Will the US Naval Academy Grant The Satanic Temple Equal Rites?

By Becky Garrison

…r guard in attendance, what was probably the first ever Satanic funeral in San Francisco for a sailor who had joined the Church of Satan. Granted, TST wasn’t founded until 2013, and they’ve posted the differences between the two satanic groups on their website, but it does, nevertheless, point to an instance where the U.S. Navy chose to honor a deceased solider even though they were a practicing satanist. In conducting research for his forthcoming…

Does Conservative Watchdog Actually “Get Religion”?

By Joanna Brooks

…story on a recently-installed, openly-gay Mormon congregational leader in San Francisco. Get Religion insisted that this story on Mitch Mayne wasn’t really news, and that it was bad journalism to claim that Mayne’s call to serve indicated “evolving” views of homosexuality in Mormonism, because only orthodox institutional statements from high-ranking Church leaders count as evidence. But as someone who’s been writing about Mormonism and homosexual…

Spiritual Envy: Michael Krasny’s Agnostic Quest

By Lisa Webster

…ht. When the play was first performed, one of the early productions was at San Quentin and those prisoners really related to it in a very deep and profound way. Because so many of us are in this kind of limbo, whether we’re behind bars or not; we’re waiting for something to happen in our lives. The Gestalt psychologists taught me the importance of being in the moment and thinking about just being in time. I felt it important to talk about being in…

Texas History: Ignoring the Experts, Round 2

By Lauri Lebo

…be live blogging the events, which begin at 11 a.m. In the meantime, the San Antonio Express News has a piece Does State Board Need a History Test, that provides a nice highlight list of ignorance exhibited in the last round of deliberations in January. Conservative board members have been trying to rewrite the curriculum to portray the United States as a Christian nation. In January, the board also voted to change curriculum wording about Sen….

Christians of Color Are Rejecting “Colonial Christianity” and Reclaiming Ancestral Spiritualities

By Deborah Jian Lee

…ited Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities and professor of ethics and African American religious studies, wrote in an email. “All over Africa you find people dressed as Quakers of a past era, wearing formal Presbyterian robes in the middle of the desert, singing ‘Amazing Grace’ instead of their own drummed invocations. It’s weird and sad.” Across these desecrated geographies, colonizers forbade traditional practices, drumming in particular, bec…

White Rockers in Search of Soul Salvation

By Paul Harvey

…to service contemporary lyricists and musicians seeking to tap into an America beyond little pink houses. But of course, congregations such as First African have a deeply conflicted history, arising as they necessarily did under the tutelage of the slave regime. This church originated when one of the first black Baptist converts in Georgia, George Liele, converted a lowcountry slave named Andrew Bryan. When Bryan first began to exhort near Savann…

Will California Outlaw Divorce?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ulment, but it must be for cause like bigamy, fraud, or incest. But as the San Diego News Network reports: “I don’t want to be married to you anymore” doesn’t count. While the anti-gay marriage people may roll their eyes at such a suggestion, Marcotte’s measure makes several points clear. First, heterosexuals, who fight tooth and nail to keep gay people from getting married, make a mockery of the institution every single day, from Britney Spears’…