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Obama’s Gay Marriage Support Shocks Black Church

By Anthea Butler

…interesting crossroads for the relationship between the president and African-American churches in the 2012 election. The prevailing narrative in the media is that black churches are wholesale against same-sex marriage. From the 2004 elections to Proposition 8, this narrative has dominated, despite the fact that there is significant support from African Americans in and outside of the church for same-sex marriage. Media outlets portrayed the rece…

Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

By Scott Blaine Swenson

…s a place of constant tension caused by unpredictable emotional, psychological, and physical abuse. “He’s very narcissistic,” Nate says of his father, “it’s always about him and his personal life. We were instruments to be used. Any concern for our individuality was absent.” Nate explains that the Phelps children (and now grandchildren) were brought up believing the world was evil, everyone and everything outside their family compound was sinful,…

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

By Sarah Posner

…seminated to millions of Americans through churches, synagogues, and political campaigns. Mattson lamented the lack of resources to respond to those sorts of distortions about Islam, but, she added, “it really shouldn’t be only our responsibility. There are so many so-called ‘experts’ about Islam [on television] but these are people who have no expertise, no academic credentials, no true institutional representation.” Mattson — singling out televi…

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

By Sammy Feldblum

…it’s made it into a Democrat[ic] issue. I think that’s quite dangerous, because that doesn’t capture our whole national context. We need both Democrats and Republicans on board. To some extent—this is not entirely true—faith and politics correlate in some communities. So you’ve got to be very careful of that if you want to reach into these communities. You’ve got to depoliticize it. Our research also shows that you’ve got to reframe climate chang…

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

By Patricia Miller

…ument 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 Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto, warning against breeding…

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

By Joel Pitney

…than in the leadership? My congregation has been very supportive. A small number of people chose to leave. Some of them not because of their feelings around the issue of homosexuality, but they just struggled with the church being in the news. But that was a small number, and most folks have been very receptive. Many immediately began telling me about their family members, and all of their personal stories. My vulnerability in sharing let them op…

Islamic Intellectual Leadership at a Crossroads

By Amina Wadud

…and to enter the world of ideas 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-Orientalis…

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

By Daniel Schultz

…they’re getting the message—-and ignoring it. Which brings us to the political implications. They’re pretty simple. First: multiply .18 by .26. That should give you (digging for iTouch calculator) 4%. That’s the number of people who can be persuaded on religious grounds to preserve reproductive rights. Common ground on this subject does not work. The best you can hope for is to change the subject, and we all know how well that worked during the he…

For Conservatives, the Future Looks Dim… and Gay

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ble.” But those “moral objections” seem to be of less concern to a growing number of Americans: Just under half of Americans (45%) say they think engaging in homosexual behavior is a sin, while an equal number says it is not. Those who believe homosexual behavior is a sin overwhelmingly oppose gay marriage. Similarly, those who say they personally feel there is a lot of conflict between their religious beliefs and homosexuality (35% of the public)…

Religion and Resistance at the New National Museum of African American History and Culture

By Anita Little

…ture. Housed within the new museum will be the Center for the Study of African American Religion, a $10 million project that aims to further research on the inextricable role spirituality has played in black America’s past and present. I took a moment to speak with its recently appointed chief curator [and current advisor to RD’s “Remapping U.S. Christianities” initiative], the Rev. Yolanda Pierce, about the goals of the center and the narrative o…