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Why Even Progressive Christianity Must Own Its Complicity in Anti-LGBT Violence

…d has been a welcoming space for LGBT people for years. But as the rainbow flag flapped in the wind above the prayer service, several church members present remarked that such a public statement of solidarity and welcome had never happened before—and wouldn’t have. Something had changed for us at Fourth Presbyterian Church—we realized we needed to own the affirmation we believed in. It’s awful that it took an act of horrific violence to inspire su…

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New Research Links Spiritual-Not-Religious to Mental Disorder

…specially those with a particular engagement with nature, as University of Florida professor Bron Taylor has argued with regard to surfing and fly fishing. Zumba and Pilates classes in otherwise empty church halls notwithstanding, the reverse in terms of physical benefit is not typically the case with religious practice. Musick and Worthen likewise question glowing findings on religion and well-being by highlighting often ignored negative effects…

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Census Reveals Gay People are Shockingly… Normal

According to new census figures, the number of people reporting that they are living with a same-sex partner has risen 52 percent in the last decade. That’s almost 902,000 people who are living all across the United States. Even here in my own incredibly conservative state of South Carolina, the number of same-sex couples increased and a quarter of them are raising children. It’s those kinds of facts that have right-wing media like the Christian…

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Will the Pope’s Woman Problem Alienate Young Catholics?

…has called women theologians “the strawberries on the cake,” along with a number of other comments insulting to women more broadly, which hasn’t helped minimize doubts on the part of many women about Francis’ ability to see them as full persons. Gina Messina-Dysert, author of the forthcoming Faithfully Feminist, noted that: Francis has made some important, positive comments about women and said it is time to reexamine the role of women in the chu…

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Trump is a Nightmare, Sure, But Can He Actually Do Anything?

…olina’s House Bill 2, Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and any number of ill-fated attempts to block the forward march of marriage equality. But my professional pedigree also breeds skepticism. And although it’s long been clear that the current administration is hell-bent on turning back the clock on basic civil rights for anyone who’s not a straight white evangelical Christian man, I often wonder whether the near-constant panic that c…

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Trump’s “Muslim Ban” A Gift to Terrorists

…other. ISIS propaganda calls the US an unsafe place for Muslims. Refugees fleeing from ISIS need somewhere to flee to. By banning refugees, Donald Trump vilifies the victims, deliberately conflating them with the perpetrators. ISIS is achieving its aims: a nationless population it can absorb into its nascent and brutal state, with an America that has given proof to their propaganda. Donald Trump’s words have already been featured in ISIS recruitm…

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A ‘Pro-Life’ Buttigieg Ambush, Trump’s Corrupt Counsel, and More

…an. 24 that it was dropping plans to host a June 12 Graham event, citing a number of statements by the evangelist “which we consider to be incompatible with our values.” Lest you think this is strictly a Brit thing, the same article notes that Graham has also been met with protests in Florida. He’s taken the news in typical stride: In a statement to Newsweek Jan. 28, Graham said he believes he is facing discrimination because of his religious beli…

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Risky Business: The Pitfalls at the Corner of Church & Wall Street

…pian “class warfare” fears of Tea Partiers and other Republicans? When the number of Americans living in poverty—46.2 million, according to a recent report from the Census Bureau—is at an all-time high? When more than 300,000 Christian churches dot the American landscape, the majority with declining membership and largely unused real estate or financial capital that might well be put to work in the service of that stalwart of Christian faith: neig…

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A Twisted Love Story: How American Evangelicals Helped Make Putin’s Russia and How Russia Became the Darling of the American Right

…re is another factor: on the other side of the Atlantic, the converts were flowing the other way. The influx of Protestant American converts, many from the evangelical tradition, but also conservative mainline Protestants, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, radically changed the face of Orthodox Christianity in America. Once a church almost exclusively made up of immigrants and their descendants, these Americans with no historical ties to Orthodox…

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The Story Behind the Catholic Church’s Stunning Reversal on Contraception

…limited to procreation; that it was acceptable to limit family size for a number of reasons; and that it was licit to use the naturally occurring sterile period to do so. Enter Catholic physician John Rock. By designing a contraceptive that used hormones already present in a woman’s body to mimic the natural infertility of a pregnant woman, he hoped the Vatican would find a theological basis to approve the method. In 1958, when the Pill was alrea…

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