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A Question for Hobby Lobby Supporters…

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…aception. So is the salient difference the size of the list? Is there some number of things-this-paper-can-be-used-for that puts the employer at a safe moral distance from the act, where previously they had been complicit? If so, what’s the number? How long does the list of possible uses have to be to assuage the employer’s conscience enough to let the employees use their compensation for things the employer finds morally repugnant? See, here’s th…

Grassroots Faith: The Lessons of The Social Gospel

By Christopher H. Evans

…litical leaders. However, he worried that the theological and political commitments of the social gospel were not penetrating the fabric of American congregational life. One hundred years later, I’m not convinced that many religious progressives have learned that it takes more than an ability to gain an audience with national political elites to spawn a movement; it requires the concerted effort to build a following. Numerous religious surveys con…

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

By Noah Berlatsky

…and he clearly wants to support them and love them. But he also feels a commitment to Christian community. Initially he says that his commitment is to what he describes (inaccurately) as the church’s 2000 years of heteronormative tradition. But towards the end he admits that he had not actually been opposed to marriage equality at all. In fact, the motivation to stake out that position hadn’t been doctrine or tradition, but the preservation of Col…

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

…ed a role that was not limited to procreation; that it was acceptable to limit family size for a number of reasons; and that it was licit to use the naturally occurring sterile period to do so. Enter Catholic physician John Rock. By designing a contraceptive that used hormones already present in a woman’s body to mimic the natural infertility of a pregnant woman, he hoped the Vatican would find a theological basis to approve the method. In 1958, w…

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

By Michael Schulson

…and the stated goal (which remains to this day) of restoring la iglesia primitiva. Over the next fifty years, Samuel set about globalizing La Luz del Mundo, often using methods that were far from primitive. Today, LLDM has significant temples throughout Mexico and Central America, as well as in Chile, Colombia, Spain, and, of course, the United States. California alone has around 40 churches, and there are major congregations in Houston, Atlanta,…

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

By Daniel Schultz

…dy late last week looking how religious beliefs influence perceptions on a number of different issues. A quick-and-dirty look at the results would tell you that religion doesn’t change much, with a few notable exceptions. For example, this surprising statistic: “60% of those who oppose gay marriage say religion is the most important influence on their views.” One wonders where the other 40% comes from. Likewise, social issues come in dead last on…

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…