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Grassroots Faith: The Lessons of The Social Gospel

By Christopher H. Evans

…conomic interests of the time. This engagement led the movement to raise a number of questions about its mission. For example, was the social gospel’s primary objective to cast a wide ideological net to create a broad coalition of secular and religious leaders, or was it to identify itself with specific economic and political policies? Common historical wisdom holds that the social gospel broke apart at the end of World War I, a victim of both a n…

New Doc Strives for Christian Unity—But What if Unity is the Problem?

By Noah Berlatsky

…xplore the issues that divide their congregations and communities. After a number of clichés are deployed to describe the deep divisions in US culture—“Our society is getting meaner,” claims one—Colossian resolutely walks participants through various exercises to identify areas of conflict, and helps the pastors work through their differences, respectfully and with love. So far so good. It quickly becomes clear, however, that there’s a major obsta…

Fasting and Faithy Friends of Convenience

By Sarah Posner

…d the 2008 election; as I’ve argued before, he gained support across the a number of demographic groups, and it’s difficult to make the case that Obama won because he finally shed the Democrats’ (imagined) hostility to religion. If you’re a religious person whose faith compels you to favor government programs to support the less economically blessed among us, pulling the lever for McCain-Palin probably wasn’t in the cards. To add insult to injury…

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

By Patricia Miller

…the Holy Spirit guided his pronouncements. “The Church cannot change her answer because this answer is true because the Catholic Church, instituted by Christ could not have so wrongly erred during all those centuries of its history,” they wrote. As one of the conservative theologians famously asked one of the female members of the commission, what would happen to “the millions we have sent to hell” for using contraception if the teaching were sudd…

Like Azusa Street Baptized into Bureaucracy: Mexico’s Flourishing LLDM Church Loses its Apostle

By Michael Schulson

…lves as charismatic or Pentecostal Christians (38%).” Pinning down precise numbers for LLDM is almost impossible. The church claims to have more than three million members abroad, and 1.5 million in Mexico, which would make it the country’s largest non-Catholic religious institution. The 2010 Mexican census reported only around 200,000 members, but that number may well be low (the Mormon church in Mexico has argued that the religious count was ina…

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

By Daniel Schultz

…and lesbians, they might agree. But ask about same-sex marriage, and the answer you might receive would be “that’s a matter for civil jurisdiction, not the church.” The environment is almost a mirror image: only 22% of those who oppose tougher regulations cite religion as their most important reason. That says to me at least that their leaders have defined the environment out of the realm of faithful concern. Abortion follows the same pattern, alm…

Did North Carolinians Vote Against their Own Beliefs?

By Peter Montgomery

The most dispiriting number to come out of North Carolina today was the huge margin of victory for a constitutional amendment that, as Candace has noted, will not only forbid same-sex couples from getting married, but will strip couples of any legal protections that might have been offered through domestic partnerships or civil unions. The broad wording of the amendment is more evidence that anti-gay advocates are lying when they say they’re only…

‘It’s a Gay Problem,’ and Other Myths From the Catholic Church’s Sexual Abuse Crisis

By Joelle Casteix

…re that tolerates them. In reality, the allegedly disproportionately large number of gay priests may be related to the problem, but it isn’t the cause of it. As Robert Mickens wrote in July, and as others have noted for years, the pathologizing of queer sexualities has driven many men to the priesthood, as the vow of celibacy offers what appears to be a safe haven from negotiating a forbidden path. As a result, although he’s careful to point out t…

Packed with Threats of Political Violence, Media Largely Ignore the NAR’s ‘Million Women’ Rally in DC

By Frederick Clarkson

…ed, and the number may even exceed a hundred thousand. Whatever the actual number at the Mall, the audience was much larger since the event was live-streamed on Facebook, YouTube, and Rumble and translated into several languages. The Jumbotrons that lined the Mall were alternatively closed captioned in English and Spanish. It’s difficult to imagine any other religious or political event on the Mall this year with such reach. Even if the numbers ar…

A Peek Inside the ‘Onion’ of Scientology

By Kristin Rawls

…trospective Rundowns who had very traumatic experiences. There have been a number of cases in which people have died under mysterious circumstances in Clearwater, Florida, [the center of Scientology in the U.S.], but nothing as traumatic as what Lisa went through. That was truly unique because it happened in Church headquarters. What I would say is that some of the Scientology processes have a destabilizing effect on some people. And certain peop…