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

By Daniel Silliman

…ism in the 1960s and the 80s and the 90s and 2010. In 2010, writing as a 91-year-old, he believed this message was one of the most important things he could leave behind on this earth. In this book he says the signs are now clearer than ever. He’s written a lot of books, but five on apocalypticism? I don’t know that he’s covered any other topic in five books. At the same time, I want to be very clear: postwar evangelicalism grew far more diverse t…

Obama’s Gay Marriage Support Shocks Black Church

By Anthea Butler

…happened. Perhaps it is time for some of the pastors preaching against same-sex marriage to look to their own houses first. Same-sex marriage is not the biggest sexual issue in the black church. Creeping preachers, 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’ an…

Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

By Scott Blaine Swenson

…father, sent to school with shaved heads for not selling enough candy door-to-door to support the family, or made to leave class during any discussion of history that referred to religion or singing of Christmas carols. Always made to feel different and largely forbidden from socializing outside the family, their alienation became so great it made going home to their father’s violent rage seem safe and normal. When they were home, Nate says, no o…

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

By Sarah Posner

…depictions of Islam, and “there needs to be more of a partnership between the people who have the accurate information and those who are lifting up who is an expert on Islam in the general media.” That, of course, holds out great — possibly unrealistic — hope for the 24/7 cable news beast. But given the number of reporters at this event, perhaps that message might start penetrating . . . somewhere. In the meantime, said Steve Gutow, executive dire…

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

By Sammy Feldblum

…ing in terms of people appealing to religious resources for help with clean-up, for long-term financial help. And they’re attentive to what the academic community is saying, and how they could be even more effective in their effort. Do you think that Harvey moved the needle much on the conversation about the environment, about the climate, in Houston? God, I’d love to know that! If you find out, tell me. If anyone from your readership out there wa…

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

By Patricia Miller

…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 news about marriage,’ said the English-language group headed by Car…

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

By Joel Pitney

…. It’s just terrific. People probably wouldn’t expect that. It’s a very low-income, blue-collar, tiny rural town, but folks are not conservative around this kind of issue. They’re loving. They reach out to everybody. I think that’s true of a lot more “people in the pews” than some in the church want to recognize. The primary difficulty in this conference really has been the Bishop. While he claims to be more in the center, he’s quite conservative…

Islamic Intellectual Leadership at a Crossroads

By Amina Wadud

…ntly, women scholars had a list discussion about the merits of activism vis-à-vis the promotion process for most US academies. If you play too much of a role in the day-to-day lives of Muslims at every level—but especially where the majority abide, which is rank and file—then your credentials as an intellectual are questionable. For women, that is. For men there are no such constraints. So even if these three men did not approach matters of politi…

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

By Daniel Schultz

…nment. That’s despite the messages they’re getting from the pulpit: about 1-in-4 said they’d heard clergy talk about immigration, and nearly half said their religious leaders had spoken out on the environment. As usual, though, the toplines obscure some important nuances. For example, while not everyone thinks faith is the most important factor on the subject of same-sex marriage, nearly everyone who does is against and Adam and Steve pledging the…

The Messiah is Not Coming

By Peter Laarman

A preacher’s offhand mention of the work-hard-and-be-rewarded economy as “a thing that is passing away” got me to thinking of all of the other things that are passing away. Allow me to catalog them: 1. related to the preacher’s point, a large and stable middle class flanked by much smaller lower and upper classes: we are morphing rapidly into a society of elites and drones without a middle that isn’t being perpetually downsized and drone-ized in…