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Growing Catholic Resistance to Bishops’ Crusades

By Peter Montgomery

…mpetent to speak on women’s issues.” In Washington State, meanwhile, “A growing number of Seattle’s Catholic parishes are saying ‘no’ to Archbishop J. Peter Sartain’s offer that churches become signature gathering points for Referendum 74, the ballot measure to roll back Washington’s recently passed same-sex marriage law.” Notably, among the parishes declining to participate are St. James Cathedral, the seat of the archdiocese, and Christ Our Hope…

Pope Francis Praised for ‘Civil Unions’ Comment, But Justice Begins at Home—In the Vatican

By Mary E. Hunt

…of late saying that civil unions can be entered into by siblings, friends without benefits as it were, and others who might wish to avail themselves of legal protections which in some countries are still only for the heterosexually married. I hasten to remind them that before same-sex marriage was available in the thirty countries where it’s now legalized, many of those countries offered (and some still offer) civil unions. Statistics are hard to…

Rumors of the Suicide of the Liberal Church Are Exaggerated: A Response to Chris Hedges

By Mark Hulsether

…tshots at institutions attempting to figure out ways to thrive. Granted, a win/win approach that maximizes the benefit of doubt in Hedges’ excluded middle ground is not more illuminating in every case. In fact, a signature problem of Protestant liberals is their tendency to hold out hope that rings false. Yet shouldn’t a flagship institution of liberation theologies get any benefit of doubt? There is also a problem—more attuned to geeks but nevert…

UPDATED: Oklahoma Personhood Bill Not Dead…

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ch care that lobbyists were trying to do an end-run around the speaker and floor leader with their discharge petition. But regardless, in short order Rep. Mike Reynolds was quoted in the Tulsa World saying that “a major state organization has said [SB-1433] will make Oklahoma look like a backward state.” (To me, that sounds like the state Republican party, but obviously that’s just a guess because vague language is vague.) And finally, this aftern…

As New Poll Finds “Increased Xenophobic Streak,” Republicans Heighten Anti-Muslim Rhetoric

By Sarah Posner

…ing in Mississippi, Alabama, Michigan, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Any claim by the states to have the legal authority to block refugee resettlement is dubious, but Ted Cruz plans to help them out by introducing a bill in the Senate to ban Muslim Syrians from entering the U.S. In Mississippi, though, the Catholic Diocese of Biloxi disagreed with the governor, noting the long-time work of the…

Lessons from the Defeat of the Oklahoma Personhood Bill

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…of course: from the simple and unsurprising non-news that sometimes people with the same job disagree with each other; to the possibility that personhood legislation is an unsettled question for US Catholic bishops; to the question of whether the bishops’ national fight with the Obama administration over contraception coverage has hardened their other positions on incipient human life. It would be premature to draw conclusions on any of these issu…

‘Imagine Better’: Can Harry Potter Change the World?

By B. Howell Belser

…them. Harry Potter, the story goes, is a special young man and a talented wizard, who—with a lot of magic and the support of a strong network of friends and allies—is able to beat back the forces of evil and change the world. Of course, it’s the details that made the series so wildly popular; details that combine to create an alternative world of wizards, muggles, and good-versus-evil that has captured public imagination on an unparalleled scale….

Mormons Prepare to March in Seven LGBT Parades this Weekend

By Joanna Brooks

…ctrine & Covenants 134:9. ‘We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government, whereby one religious society is fostered and another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of its members, as citizens, denied.’ The same Constitution that is claimed by scriptures and church leaders to be inspired protects individual rights and equality for all, not just those you agree with or those in the majori…

The Harlot Shall Be Burned with Fire: Biblical Literalism in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

By Sarah Sentilles

…erself by playing the harlot, she profanes her father. She shall be burned with fire—and enacts them on women’s bodies. On Jewish women’s bodies. His actions represent literalism taken to its terrifying end. The killer burns women, stones them, cuts off their arms, cuts apart their bodies. His crimes are described in vivid detail and, just in case words don’t suffice, the viewer gets images too—photograph after photograph of dead women, dismembere…

Feeding on the Faithful: How Supernatural Thinking Empowered the Third Reich

By Eric Kurlander

…ers? The message is that the Third Reich would have been highly improbable without a widespread penchant for supernatural thinking—exacerbated by military defeat and social crisis—which Hitler and the Nazi Party rushed to exploit. Nazism was not the first movement to take advantage of people’s faith for political purposes. But Hitler and the Nazi Party was far more effective than other parties in drawing upon what I call the “supernatural imaginar…