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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

…accuses Francis of playing “hide and seek” on the issue. In 2009, the Vatican came out strongly against the criminalization of sexual minorities. This followed the introduction of Uganda’s infamous “Kill the Gays” bill in Parliament. Then little-known U.S. evangelical Scott Lively traveled to Uganda for an anti-homosexuality conference in March 2009. The very next month, the Ugandan Parliament drafted and introduced one of the most extreme anti-L…

Restoring Dignity: The Employee Free Choice Act

By Peter Laarman

…gh about the technical aspects; here is the bottom line: conservatives who call EFCA a “game changer” are absolutely right. Whether you think the game needs changing depends on whose side you are on, to quote the venerable labor anthem. Imagine what a doubling or tripling of union membership during the hoped-for eight years of Obama time could mean for progressive advancement in this new century! Because make no mistake: the new labor movement is…

The Incredible Shrinking Catholic Church

By Paul Gorrell

…, priests have even denied parishioners communion if they vote for a political candidate who favors abortion rights. This exclusion from the sacrament is essentially a form of excommunication. Dogma Over Diplomacy Ironically, at a time when many earnest believers are being turned away from the communion rail, the Pope recently un-excommunicated Bishop Richard Williamson, who a few days before his reconciliation with the church reaffirmed his belie…

No Conspiracy Theories Needed: Abortion Foes Cry Racism

By Kathryn Joyce

…r positions were far more nuanced, voluntary, and individualistic than the caricature preferred by anti-abortion activists, and she worked in partnership with esteemed black leaders of the day, such as W.E.B. DuBois and Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women, in setting up her family planning services in Harlem. These mitigating factors are often lost amid the inaccurate or out-of-context reports about Sanger and were…

‘Murder Among the Mormons,’ Latest True Crime Doc From Netflix, Highlights Issues of Faith, Skepticism, and Authenticity

By Benjamin E. Park

…divert attention and buy more time. Instead, the deaths brought his half-decade career to a deadly halt, and insurmountable trauma to several families. Murder Among the Mormons spends most of its time on the resulting investigation, including the mistakes Hofmann made that led to police suspicion and the brilliant work by forensic investigators to uncover his forgeries. Hofmann was arrested in January 1986, pled guilty in January 1987, and sentenc…

Religion vs. Science: America’s Perilous Fight

By Edward J. Larson

…explanation for origins. “After a searching review of the record and applicable case law,” the judge ruled, “we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science.” He gave three reasons. First, unlike science, ID invokes supernatural explanations. Second, it rests on the flawed argument that evidence against the current theory of evolution supports the design alternative. Third, scient…

How to Make Nones and Lose Money: Study Shows Cost of Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals

By Kaya Oakes

…aled that, unsurprisingly, “a scandal causes a persistent decline in the local Catholic affiliation and church attendance.” “Some Catholics join other religious denominations during the first three years after a scandal,” they write. “But these individuals later end up with no religious affiliation.” They end up, in other words, as Nones. The economists involved in this study focused on the zip code where a clergy sex scandal had occurred. They fo…

The Messiah is Not Coming

By Peter Laarman

…lification, apart from the first. That one is plain for all to see in the scary numbers given out by the Census Bureau earlier this month: big jumps in the number of Americans losing compensated work for working poverty or worse, and concomitant big jumps in the number of people losing health care coverage. The thing is—and labor market specialists all concur—these blows are no longer cyclical phenomena that will be reversed once “the economy” rea…

Conservative Evangelical Eric Metaxas, Doing Twitter Theology, Claims ‘Jesus Was White’

By Eric Vanden Eykel

…sponded: “Exactly! Which shows how arbitrary and self-contradictory racial categories can be. Many consider Jews ‘white’ and accuse them of having ‘white privilege.’ But if Jesus is beyond racial categories, why aren’t other Jews? And what about Egyptians? And Greeks? Who gets to decide?” Here, both Metaxas and his interlocutor fail to appreciate that “Jews” doesn’t imply a homogeneous “racial” category. The claim that Jews are “white” or even “mo…

It’s The Apocalypse, Stupid: Understanding Christian Opposition to Obamacare, Civil Rights, New Deal and More

By Daniel Silliman

…ry at Washington State University, traces this history of American evangelical apocalypticism from the end of the 19th century to the present day. In the process, he proposes a revised understanding of American evangelicalism, focused on the urgent expectations of the end of human history. If you want to understand modern evangelicalism, Sutton says, you have to understand their End Times theology. Daniel Silliman spoke with Sutton at the Heidelbe…