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More Mixed Signals from Pope Francis; Church of England Wrestles with Rifts; Faith Groups Lobby Pro & Con on Irish Referendum; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…. The website Erasing 76 Crimes published a new map of countries with laws against homosexual activity, which includes four fewer countries than it did at the beginning of last year. Responsible for the decline from 82 to 78 are Mozambique, which dropped its anti-gay law as part of a Penal Code overhaul last year; Palau, which decriminalized homosexuality last year; the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus; and São Tomé and Príncipe, which had actu…

Waiting for Lightning to Strike: A Wobbly Agnostic among the Atheists

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…hadowing buildings of varying sizes and architectural styles—it looks like a child upended his collection of blocks and called it a city. A nice farmers’ market on Saturday mornings is really the only reason I come downtown. It’s the territory of insurance companies, Quizno’s, and conventioneers. Nancy helps me watch for a parking place, but I’m rattled by the people with the signs. They’ll spot me, I know. They’ll know that I am the dog who left…

Wichita, the Sequel: A Clinic Reopens at Ground Zero in America’s Fight over Abortion

By Kathryn Joyce

…and helped inspire Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly to begin a nightly television harangue against the doctor he condemned as “Tiller the Killer.” Dr. Tiller had been forced to wear body armor, travel with a guard, rebuild his clinic as a virtual bunker, and appear in court regularly to defend himself against legal complaints in a state where grand jury investigations can be launched by a few thousand petition signatures. When Roeder was caught after the…

Are American Christians “Persecuted”?

By Eric C. Miller

Reflecting on the recent execution of 21 Coptic Christians by ISIS fanatics in Libya, Rod Dreher, writing at the American Conservative, calls the incident “a sobering reminder of what real persecution looks like.” Coming from Dreher, for whom the future of American Christianity looks increasingly ominous, the line is sobering in itself. But he goes on: Yet it is also the kind of thing that people in this country who fear and loathe Christians poi…

Updated: My Work on Confederate Monuments Leaves This Christian Ethicist Distrustful of Calls for Reconciliation and Healing

By Ryan Andrew Newson

…guage that fits with easy calls for bipartisanship and unity. The main takeaway of his speech was that the United States is better than this, and that the nation needed to return to what it has always been—decent and honorable. This sentiment, of course, flies in the face of what we witnessed today: Twelve Republican senators and dozens of representatives (representing millions of American voters) objecting to Biden’s victory, denying that his ele…

The Economy is Racism: Ending Race-Based Economic Violence is the Real Challenge of This Moment

By Peter Laarman

…monitored remotely. And yes, investors understand that the pandemic will damage or entirely eliminate certain sectors. But that’s okay, too, as long as the Federal Reserve is standing by to provide unlimited long-term assistance to big capital even as the losers drop away. I say all this to make the point that the new normal—with pain and misery at the bottom and staggering wealth at the top—is really the old normal of this country’s uniquely rac…

“Reconciliation” With Indigenous People is Comforting For Many Canadians, But is a Christian Concept Up To The Task?

By Pamela Klassen and Joseph Wiebe

…eaties). This requires doing the careful work of listening to Cree, Anishinaabeg, and other Indigenous neighbours to figure out collectively how to live together after years of Canadian attempts to destroy Indigenous languages, families, and systems of governance. With this very fraught and lively discussion of questions of reconciliation and settler dispossession and violence dominating the news cycle, it was particularly surprising—even breathta…

Memo to David Brooks: Francis Is Not Naïve For Criticizing Capitalism

By Peter Laarman

…ts better and better with the moneymen in charge. Francis shows that he is aware of this, whereas Brooks does not. He cheekily gives us a defense of fracking as a very good public outcome flowing from individual greed. You have to give him credit: the man has balls to say this. Yes, fracking gives Americans more cheap carbon energy—for a while. And then we’re left with ruined landscapes, ruined aquifers, and our same old dependence on foreign ener…

How Not to Support Obamacare

By Peter Laarman

What’s striking about the president’s pirouette on the ACA, and about Democratic disarray in the face of the renewed GOP assault in the House, is the absence of any open discourse on the underlying ethics of health care. I’ve heard just a few commentators say, and rather gingerly, “Ummm, if the young and healthy people don’t participate it kind of defeats the idea of how insurance works. Ummm, it’s like the kids need to pay a little more so other…

Celebrate Jesus with Weird Merchandise!

By Gwynne Watkins

…eptions. One is the Oriental Trading Company. Founded to create cheap plastic toys for carnivals, OTC is now a leading supplier of cheap plastic stuff for church groups and Christian schools. Their party supply catalog always contains a small section dedicated to Jesus merchandise, which results in some odd juxtapositions. Here, for example, are the current most popular category themes on the OTC website: …