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“As Orthodox As They Come”: A Backstage Conversation With Rob Bell

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…historical tradition helps tap you into the big thing, which goes beyond any tradition, now you’re onto something. The Exodus story: when people want to argue about whether or not it happened, and we don’t have any scientific evidence, I just say, “Yeah but the story has given people tremendous hope to work to rescue others, to organize for the liberation of those who are being repressed.” Are there epistemological differences between a Biblical…

Episcopal Conference Lives Up to Episcopal Jokes

By Julie Ingersoll

…ons in the US with over 2 million members, though the significance of that number is unclear since, as the priest in the church where I was baptized once teased me: “when you’re baptized we have you; you’re ours and you don’t have much to say about it.” Recent reports indicate that about 350 congregations have departed to affiliate with more conservative Anglican Bishops outside the US. Whether the remaining congregations are better off or not…

Distant Churches and the Isolated Poor: Lessons from Katrina, Ten Years Later

By R. Drew Smith

…borhoods, sometimes experiencing significant attrition in their membership numbers and finances, and sometimes choosing to relocate altogether. Even institutionally resourceful congregations that remain in high-poverty neighborhoods have increasingly faced great difficulties in their efforts to connect culturally, interpersonally, and programmatically to their immediate neighborhoods. In a 2003 study of interactions between churches and impoverish…

With Election Takeaways Like ‘Too Transgender’ or ‘the US is Shifting Right,’ Dems are Determined to Learn the Wrong Lesson

By Chrissy Stroop

…nd minimum wage increases. Yes, while some are so fed up they’ll vote for any candidate who appears (however absurdly) to be “an outsider,” many of these voters, it stands to reason, must genuinely not fully grasp that they just voted against the policies they support. So what are the right lessons to draw from this hot mess? For one, Republicans did not win a mandate to persecute transgender Americans, deport millions of immigrants, bring back pr…

The Gospel of Contradiction: An Interview with Mary Gordon

By Nathan Schneider

…ing was. I can’t imagine a writer having that relationship to a community anymore. The form of this book covers a number of different genres, including commentary, exegesis, polemic, and memoir. Was there a model in mind? No, I didn’t have any model. The books about Jesus that I went to were either very, very personal and not analytic at all, or very analytic and not personal at all. I was trying to mesh those two voices. I let the stories steer m…

A Twisted Love Story: How American Evangelicals Helped Make Putin’s Russia and How Russia Became the Darling of the American Right

By Katherine Kelaidis

…were flowing the other way. The influx of Protestant American converts, many from the evangelical tradition, but also conservative mainline Protestants, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, radically changed the face of Orthodox Christianity in America. Once a church almost exclusively made up of immigrants and their descendants, these Americans with no historical ties to Orthodoxy, became a majority in a number of Orthodox jurisdictions in the Uni…

The Religious Case Against Religious Discrimination in Cakeshop Case

By Patrick Hornbeck

…like Phillips’s. But, as survey after survey has demonstrated, substantial numbers of Catholics, and to a lesser extent evangelicals as well, are not following their denominations’ leaders down this particular road, and there is a growing number of religious institutions that have embraced marriage equality and advocated for LGBTQ+ rights in the public square. Cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop make it clear that the boundaries of a national settleme…

How a Ruling for Masterpiece Cakeshop Could Embolden White Nationalists

By Sunnivie Brydum

…te—or even federal—protections aimed at combatting discrimination against any number of marginalized populations. “The cultural and political prominence of religious freedom as an American ideal draws people to it,” Wenger said. “The reason people appeal to it for all sorts of purposes is because it’s so culturally, politically, and legally powerful.” Indeed, as Wenger’s book documents in deep historical detail, the bedrock American principle has…

Proposition 8—the Rematch?

By Bill Berkowitz

…s.” Wildmon’s group claimed victory in its boycotts of the Ford Motor Company and McDonald’s, both of which “backed out of their promotion of the homosexual agenda.” As might be expected, however, AFA’s number one achievement was the passage of California’s Proposition 8—the anti-same-sex marriage constitutional amendment. ++++++++++ RD Tidbits Wycliffe USA’s “The Last Languages Campaign”: A donor that wishes to remain anonymous has given $50 mill…

Do Atheists Belong in the Interfaith Movement?

By Chris Stedman

…e for such conversations, but the ideal forum for it. I can fondly recall any number of incidents where I argued theology and philosophy with a religious colleague while doing interfaith work; and how, later, they told me that they actually took my perspective seriously because we had built a trusting relationship. It made all the difference that I treated them as intellectual equals—as people with respectable goals rather than just mindless adher…