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War on Christmas Affirmed by Southern Baptist Convention

By Mark Gstohl

…tore Christmas to its proper place in the culture.” Although I doubt that any of my Lutheran, Catholic, Muslim, or atheist friends will call me to complain about this resolution, I find it just as troubling as many of the previous more controversial resolutions. As a Baptist, I tend to use Scripture as a hermeneutical screen for understanding my world and the ethical issues I face. The first text that comes to mind is also known as The Golden Rule…

As a Queer Catholic Woman I Had High Hopes Before the 2023 Catholic Synod on Synodality

By Emma Cieslik

…hope. For example, when the pope said, in 2022, that God “does not disown any of his children,” or in 2023 that “people with homosexual tendencies are children of God,” a number of LGBTQ Catholics and advocates, myself included, got excited for a day or two—maybe even called our parents (if the Church hasn’t driven a wedge between them and us). But then the news cycle passes and, with each expression of anti-LGBTQ Catholic doctrine on diocesan and…

Emanuel’s Pulse: A Plea for Black Church–LGBTIQ Solidarity

By J. Kameron Carter

…are not ever-vigilant. . . Yes. And just as we must better understand how any religion can be turned toward and made to express hatred, so too we can and must give ourselves to turning our faith traditions against such hatred so that they may be vehicles of life and hope. But what does this mean in the specific case of the black church, in relation to the LGBT community? In its black church expression, what does Christianity’s turn against religio…

Republicans in Favor of Reproductive Rights

By Katie Toth

…l was conducted by TNS, an independent research firm which conducts weekly phone polls, according to a Republicans for Choice press release. The poll asked, regardless of respondents’ personal feelings about abortion, whether “the woman, family, and her doctor [should] make the decision or the government [should] make the decision.” Seventy-one percent of self-identified Republicans said they “strongly” felt that the woman, her family, and her doc…

Why It’s Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…use he says what their fears want to hear. He can’t deliver any more than anyone else can.” But that doesn’t keep him, or any of the other candidates or pastors from promising that security, whether it’s offered through God, guns or the government. How did we get into such as sorry state? Gentiles, Spong says. Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy John Shelby Spong HarperOne February 16, 2016 In his new book, Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy,…

Sean Feucht’s New Year’s Rockin’ Superspreader Revival is a ‘Tepid and Meager’ Effort at Racial Reconciliation

By Isaiah Murtaugh

…an alley in downtown Los Angeles, across the street from a bank and a cell phone store and a block away from a Little Tokyo walking mall. But up on a streetlight at the alley’s entrance, a city historical marker is tacked: Azusa St. Mission… Cradle of the Worldwide Pentecostal Movement. For some, this is sacred ground: the place where the Azusa Street Revival, the founding moment of the modern Pentecostal christian church, made its home in 1906, a…

Is Herman Cain’s Long-Running Minstrel Show Finally at an End?

By Anthea Butler

…stioned about his past affairs. But Cain’s arrogance won’t wash with the many white voters who he believes “can’t pretend” to like him. Cain’s inability to acknowledge his foibles speaks to very deep pathology on his part. His love of the media spotlight may cost him his wife and children, yet he continues to use them as a shield to hide his failings. Ginger White’s claims, backed up with receipts and phone records, are compelling. Besides, who wo…

Vatican Instruction on Cremation Rankles Many, But Give it a Second Look

By Karen E. Park

…or other sacred ground. They cannot be divided up, shared, or retained in any other way. What business is it of the Catholic Church what anyone does with their own dead body, or with the body of a dead loved one? This question was asked immediately, and repeatedly, in response to news reports on the Vatican document. CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the National Catholic Reporter and others reported on the new teaching, and in the com…

High Ark: A Geologist on the True Meaning of Noah’s Flood

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…to describe it. And if you think about it—those are required elements of any flood story. There had to be a big flood, and someone had to survive to record it, or we wouldn’t know about it at all! The real insights are in the differences between the flood stories. Whether they are describing something like a dam breaking, or water coming from the sea in Tahiti, or a tsunami. There were missionaries in the Pacific who were confused because the nat…

When Mormons Mobilize: Anti-Gay Marriage Prop. 8 Effort ‘Outed’?

By Joanna Brooks

…ry source of Mormon messaging during the Proposition 8 campaign was the anonymously-authored “Six Consequences if Prop 8 Fails” document, which went viral across Mormon social networks after its introduction by email in mid-August and was utilized as a training document and handout in the Mormon-coordinated ground campaign. The document alleged that the legalization of same-sex marriage would eventuate in the teaching of same-sex marriage in publi…