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Exclusion is Causing Great Harm: A Conversation With Suspended UMC Pastor Rev. Cynthia Meyer

By Joel Pitney

…itney: How did you get into the ministry? Cynthia Meyer: My family did not participate actively in the church at all, but as a junior high kid, I was drawn to youth group. So I got involved in my local United Methodist Church pretty deeply during my junior high and high school years, participating in youth programs and trips. The church helped me learn about the world. That really meant a lot to me. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had…

Islamic Intellectual Leadership at a Crossroads

By Amina Wadud

…you made it into the book. I told him I do not need the recognition of the particular parties involved, including the neo-Orientalist scholar who edited it, to affirm my contributions to Islam (or to my faith, for both are part of my devotion to Allah). They do have a substantial number of women included, so I would not complain on that count. But, here’s the thing: there are no women under the category of Muslim intellectuals. Apparently women do…

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

By Daniel Schultz

…marriage equality. You might think that reflects a dismal failure on the part of liberal clergy such as myself. After all, shouldn’t we be able to make the case that God wants everyone to be bound in covenant relationships? Not so fast, Sparky. I think what this shows is that liberal believers bracket the question out of the religious realm. That is, if you asked people in many UCC congregations if they thought faith was important in determining…

For Conservatives, the Future Looks Dim… and Gay

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…Christian America – the moral majority – from imposing moral government on pagan public schools, pagan higher learning and pagan media. But it’s just that kind of talk that’s turning off younger voters. The College Republican National Committee commissioned its own poll of college-aged Republicans, and what they found doesn’t bode well for the GOP’s future. If young voters primarily thought the Republican Party’s policy plan in 2012 was to prevent…

Religion and Resistance at the New National Museum of African American History and Culture

By Anita Little

…g off of that question, in what way is black history and black present inseparable from black religion? A major question is: how do you separate out this story? For example, if we’re looking at 1968, and we’re studying the Black Panthers or Black Power, we tend to assume that story is different from 1964 with the story of Rev. Martin Luther King. But we forget the religious influence that happened in both of those. For me, all of this is really me…

New Report: Angels & Aliens in Texas Schools

By Mark A. Chancey

…courts; namely, that discussions of religion should neither promote nor disparage particular religious beliefs, nor favor religion or non-religion over the other. The First Amendment Center’s The Bible & Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide and the Society of Biblical Literature’s Bible Electives in Public Schools: A Guide provided a starting point from which to consider whether a course’s approach could be considered nonsectarian. The results…

“Real” Evangelicals Don’t Support Trump? Not So Fast…

By Neil J. Young

…r “never” attend church still see themselves as evangelical, they do so in part because of a capacious evangelical theology that holds up the born-again experience as the singular determinant of true Christianity while allowing for a range of worship practices and secondary beliefs. Although most evangelical theologians would argue that religious conversion should bring with it certain behaviors, including regular church attendance, clearly many A…

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

By R. Drew Smith

…high-poverty neighborhoods at their own volition, entering and leaving as part of a weekly Sunday commute, and capable of opting (individually or institutionally) for quite different locations and demographic and social environments if deemed necessary. Impoverished residents are less able to relocate at will, but even when they do they may change their location but likely not their social and demographic environment. For contemporary churches to…

No ‘Christian Compassion’ in Tony Perkins’ Response to Anti-Gay Bullying, Suicides

By Andrew Marin

…hat’s the point of free will. However, it wouldn’t be free will unless the partnered gay Christian has the ability to choose to live as a partnered gay Christian. Once these ideas were given voice the conversation quickly shifted, as each heard the other for the first time. When social policy, theology, and personally-tied emotions are parted for even the slightest moment, it becomes clear that at a base level no one wants their story or their jou…

The Fourth of July Is Not America’s Birthday

By Peter Laarman

…once-vibrant popular democracy. Speaking as an incorrigible Roundhead, I insist that the revolutionary struggle is far from over and that indifference and/or indolence are unacceptable in these circumstances. To use Paine’s language, we don’t need the the kind of summer soldiers and sunshine patriots who will stuff themselves with “birthday” cake this weekend while remaining oblivious to the stakes in the present crisis….