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

By Daniel Silliman

…vil Rights movement as an example of people who break the law. Whiteness influenced these evangelical theologians, and when we compare them with African American theologians we can see how their sensitivities influenced the way they read, understood, and applied the Bible. How does apocalypticism shape someone like Billy Graham and, by extension, modern evangelicalism? Billy Graham gets a pass from a lot of scholars who pay very little attenion to…

Obama’s Gay Marriage Support Shocks Black Church

By Anthea Butler

…s, stunted sexuality, homophobia, and sexual abuse are competing for issue number one in their churches; at many, they are tied at the number one slot. It is high time to for the leaders of the black church to ‘put away childish things’ and to engage in a real conversation about sexuality, same-sex marriage, and the homophobia embedded in the black church community. Pontificating and posturing props up preachers, and does little to edify congregat…

Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

By Scott Blaine Swenson

…ify hate and violence. And while the coincidence of being born under the “Sign of the Beast” in Topeka 666 is still a little unnerving, there are differing opinions about the number’s translation. Some theologians suggest the number should really be 616, in which case, all eyes on Peoria, Illinois….

Religious Leaders On Anti-Muslim Frenzy: “Silence Is Not An Option”

By Sarah Posner

…nts hosted by religious right groups. Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, speaking to evangelical Christians engaging in or promoting anti-Muslim bigotry, said, “Shame on you . . . as an evangelical I say you bring dishonor to the name of Jesus Christ.” Many speakers, including Cizik, chided unnamed purveyors of anti-Muslim fervor as antagonists of the First Amendment. Richard Killmer of the National Re…

Elaine Howard Ecklund Wants to Dispel Myths Surrounding Religious Resistance to Science

By Sammy Feldblum

…denominations. And Latinos, and all range of Catholics. In the more conservative faith traditions—evangelicals and Orthodox Jews, for example—there is this sense that if science appears to be messing with the image of who God is, or who human beings are, then there are some tensions between faith and science. Think about an issue like human genetic reproductive technologies. Those kinds of technologies tend to challenge conceptualizations of what…

Conservative Hardliners at Synod Prompt Question: “What Are We Doing Here?”

By Patricia Miller

…m the first small group discussions held this week indicate that a sizable number of bishops believe that the preparatory document is all doom-and-gloom and doesn’t do enough to celebrate the sizable number of Catholics who are successfully leading a traditional Catholic family life, reports John Allen: The synod’s final report ‘should begin with hope rather than failures, because a great many people already do successfully live the Gospel’s good…

Exclusion is Causing Great Harm: A Conversation With Suspended UMC Pastor Rev. Cynthia Meyer

By Joel Pitney

…this fixation within the United Methodist Church and across the more conservative factions of all the denominations of Christianity? There’s a real hang-up around sexuality. Variance in sexuality is hard. It’s one of those things that folks have a real hard time grasping. Culturally, there have been taboos for a long time, and some folks have trouble letting that go. I also think folks that have various kinds of privilege and power often feel stre…

Islamic Intellectual Leadership at a Crossroads

By Amina Wadud

…s is powerful. In 2009 a Wahabbi-funded publication called “The 500 Most Influential Muslims” was published. Nice and glossy, more than 200 pages, with the entire text also online, and given away free in so many places I cannot count them. Propaganda for sure. My shaykh said to me, I see you made it into the book. I told him I do not need the recognition of the particular parties involved, including the neo-Orientalist scholar who edited it, to af…

How Religion Shapes (or Doesn’t) Our Views on Public Issues

By Daniel Schultz

…“60% of those who oppose gay marriage say religion is the most important influence on their views.” One wonders where the other 40% comes from. Likewise, social issues come in dead last on a list of voter concerns. It’s not even close. Even more startling, however, just 7% of respondents said that religion is the biggest influence in their thinking about immigration. And only 6% say the same thing about the environment. That’s despite the messages…

The Messiah is Not Coming

By Peter Laarman

…ation, 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” really s…