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Putting the “Protest” Back in Protestant: Reclaiming the Spirit of Resistance

By Peter Laarman

…during the 1950s to form a unified, unifying, and unabashedly progressive new denomination: the United Church of Christ. But the new body never quite took off. Lots of big Congregational churches, on both the most liberal and most conservative margins, refused to sign up for the new configuration in 1957. The more liturgical “German” Reformed wing (the old Evangelical and Reformed Church) mistrusted the Yankees and vice versa. Today’s UCC, at 1.3…

Sexual Abuse is Inevitable in Christian Patriarchy; Just Take a Look at Doug Wilson’s Christ Church, and its New ‘Documentary’ ‘Eve in Exile: The Restoration of Femininity’

By Cait West

…e see clips of women with babies and women cooking, yes, but now we have a new addition: women using power tools and women as teachers in a classroom. So women aren’t confined to the kitchen alone—they’re called by God to be productive in many ways. But we learn soon enough that, according to Merkle, women must always have their focus on their home, their husbands, their children, and their community in order to embrace true femininity. While this…

The Revelation of Kurt Andersen: With ‘Evil Geniuses’ a Media Mandarin Discovers Plutocracy

By Peter Laarman

…st ambitions in completely undoing the premises and core principles of the New Deal and the postwar social compact. They accomplished this feat in just 30 years of concerted effort. Andersen shows us how they did it through sins of commission but also sins of omission: quietly declining to renew key regulatory provisions, dropping cost-of-living indexing for recipients of various public benefits, letting the real value of the federal minimum wage…

New Report Raises Questions about Pope Francis’ Response to Sex Abuse Scandal

By Sarah Posner

…d reforming the Vatican bureaucracy (35%) should be top priorities for the new pope. This news coincides with an extensive report in the Washington Post on Pope Francis’ reaction (as Archbishop Bergoglio) to the sex abuse scandal in Argentina, which won’t inspire much confidence or optimism about his possible global response to the scandal as pope: Father Julio Cesar Grassi was a celebrity in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires. The young, dynamic, me…

The Revolution Will Be Whispered: An Excerpt From Everywhere a Guest, Nowhere at Home: A New Vision of Israel and Palestine

By Kim Chernin

…an finance the project. The second cousin of the Jewish girl, who lives in New York, has come to Israel for his bar mitzvah. Everyone knows that when his grandfather dies he is going to inherit a lot of money. Both girls have been up late whispering with him. When other people hear about their project they will contribute. The girls know the formula: start small, work hard, be true to your vision and help will come. No profit is going to be made,…

The Pope and Social Media: A Digital Counter-Reformation?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…(if there ever really were such things). Effectively participating in the new social media environment is not a matter of picking up a new vocabulary of glyphs, images, and sounds that will “capture” the attention of those with whom we want to connect. Digital media has no captives. At least so far, no one’s really figured out how to effectively and durably colonize it. And, I’m pretty sure that’s all to the good. A meaningful interactive pilgrim…

Romanian Exorcist Released from Prison, Becomes New Folk Devil

By Joseph Laycock

…on and the subordinate categories of madness, superstition, and cults. The New York Times dubbed Cornici’s death “a casualty on Romania’s road back from atheism.” Under communism, Orthodox Christianity, as well as folk practices, were repressed. After the revolution, hundreds of new churches and monasteries were erected and there was a scramble to recruit new priests. There was also a popular demand for services such as exorcism and priests like C…

Global LGBT Recap: Francis’s First Year; Homophobia and Development; African Activists Push Back

By Peter Montgomery

…anti-religion ethos.’” Netherlands: Former Right-Wing Politician Launches New Islamic Party According to news reports, “Arnoud van Doorn, a former far-right Dutch politician and a former friend of notorious anti-Muslim propagandist Geert Wilders, but later accepted Islam and became a Muslim, has announced his plans to launch a new Islamic party in his native Holland.” The Islamic Party for Unity will be contending for three seats in the upcoming…

‘Russkii Mir,’ the Russian Equivalent of ‘Blood & Soil’ Ideology at the Heart of Putin’s War, Explained and Rejected by Theologians in New Statement

By Daniel Schultz

…nderpinnings of Putin’s nationalist project. Steven Erlanger writes in the New York Times that Mr. Putin has repeatedly asserted that Ukraine is not a real state and that the Ukrainians are not a real people, but actually Russian, part of a Slavic heartland that also includes Belarus. This is the Russian World ideology, rooted specifically in the “one Kyivan font” of Christian baptism, which allows both secular and sacred leaders to minimize the a…

Note to the New Pope: Half of the World’s Poor are Women

By Marian Ronan

…merican woman who cares more about gender than about the poor to whom this new pope is dedicated. But let’s be clear: half of the world’s poor are women, and the Church’s effort to deprive the Catholic women among them of contraceptives, of the use of condoms that could protect them from HIV-AIDS, and of the ministry of women priests who would marry, absolve, and anoint them, is no service to them. Even as President Ronald Reagan challenged Michae…