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In the Papal Pocket: Benedict XVI and the Press

By Mary E. Hunt

…the people who work in Catholic schools for low wages. We see T-shirts for papal teddy bears, but no hint of the impact of the Vatican’s policy banning the use of condoms, even for those who are HIV-infected. Whether it is a Sunday morning talk show, the front page of a newspaper, or the evening news, I continue to be amazed at how little the Vatican press office has to do to assure softball questions, few dissident voices, and reverent talk about…

Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…ds of witnesses in the investigation leading to the indictments. Dozens of participants were treated at area hospitals after the sweat lodge, and by the end of that fatal day Kirby Brown and James Shore were dead. A third participant, Elizabeth Newman, died a week later at a hospital in Flagstaff, Arizona. I am not a psychic or an attorney, but my experiences through the years with American Indian religious issues tell me this: even though James R…

The Messiah is Not Coming

By Peter Laarman

…am economists gauge it, and the economic well-being of everyday people has parted company for good. Political life: Here the rapid evaporation of the middle produces grave disfigurations. The Tea Party phenomenon is just one example. As the anxious middle moves toward the fringe, the despairing new poor drop out altogether, while the angry rich fight for their pelf, in part by creating a whole new underground political strike force. In their impor…

Conservative Evangelical Eric Metaxas, Doing Twitter Theology, Claims ‘Jesus Was White’

By Eric Vanden Eykel

…e German theologian who was imprisoned and executed by the Third Reich for participating in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. After it was published, Metaxas’s biography was strenuously criticized by Bonhoeffer scholars around the world, and for a variety of reasons, from its failure to draw from primary source material to its misuse of German texts (a language Metaxas doesn’t speak). But among the most scathing criticisms were those who argued…

It’s The Apocalypse, Stupid: Understanding Christian Opposition to Obamacare, Civil Rights, New Deal and More

By Daniel Silliman

…Billy Graham and, by extension, modern evangelicalism? Billy Graham gets a pass from a lot of scholars who pay very little attenion to his apocalypticism. I think that’s wrong. I think it’s been a core of his ministry. In 1949, when Graham had his first major revival in Los Angeles, the famous one that put him on the map, the revival began just days after Harry Truman announced that the Soviets had tested an atomic bomb. So Graham used this to say…

Obama’s Gay Marriage Support Shocks Black Church

By Anthea Butler

…t felt like a betrayal. Rev. Bryant went on to say that he and other black pastors felt “jilted” by the president, particularly since they had defended him against Franklin Graham’s recent attack on the president’s Christianity. Prof. Michael Eric Dyson gave an impassioned sermon on The Ed Show, calling out the black church and Rev. Bryant, Sophia Nelson, and Roland Martin on their opposition to same-sex marriage, encouraging them not to become “s…

Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

By Scott Blaine Swenson

…insults, and Nate Phelps is concerned for his nieces and nephews forced to parrot their parents’ vulgarities, Rev. Schlingensiepen sees a childlike insecurity within Fred Phelps that took hold in his youth. “He’s basically an insecure guy who created, or fell in with, a series of interpretations that are intended to justify his inner rage, mask his inner fear, and by picking controversial social issues, justify his violence,” Schlingensiepen says….

Religious Leaders On Anti-Muslim Frenzy: “Silence Is Not An Option”

By Sarah Posner

…rfaith groups and the government could “work out the most effective way to parallel actions to lift up a clear image that this has no place in American life.” The anti-Muslim prejudice that has reached fever pitch over the past few months, and against which these activists were pushing back, did not emerge out of nowhere. Films like Obsession and Relentless — and many of the “experts” interviewed in those documentaries, have been disseminated to m…

Elaine Howard Ecklund Wants to Dispel Myths Surrounding Religious Resistance to Science

By Sammy Feldblum

…a—I don’t know if I should say unusual, but I can say that there’s a large number of religious organizations in Houston. I think that’s patently obvious, but also true from the research. There are potential civic resources through those religious organizations. You saw it in the kerfuffle about Lakewood, the big church there on the freeway, opening its doors. And people saying “why isn’t this enormous church opening its doors for people as a shelt…

Conservative Hardliners at Synod Prompt Question: “What Are We Doing Here?”

By Patricia Miller

…y Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto, warning against breeding a sense of ‘pastoral despair.’ However, one of the German bishops cautioned that holding the hard line on the communion teaching in the face of the realities faced by divorced couples makes people “doubt God.” Archbishop Heiner Koch said, “More than a few people concerned leave the Church with their children on the basis of what they see as a rejection,” reports Joshua McElwee in the N…