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

By Johnny P. Flynn

…f the average American living room. Because, that is how Indians become warriors. Right now Indians who do practice their tribal ceremonies are walking on edge. Already in Arizona, state legislator Senator Albert Hale, who happens to be Navajo, has introduced a bill to regulate native-style religious practices on non-Indian lands. The bill would require the State Department of Health to draft regulations in consultation with American Indian spiri…

The Messiah is Not Coming

By Peter Laarman

…umbers given out by the Census Bureau earlier this month: big jumps in the number of Americans losing compensated work for working poverty or worse, and concomitant big jumps in the number of people losing health care coverage. The thing is—and labor market specialists all concur—these blows are no longer cyclical phenomena that will be reversed once “the economy” really starts humming. “The economy,” in the way that mainstream economists gauge it…

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

By Eric Vanden Eykel

…hat we do not face the particular barriers of racism.” White privilege is primarily a systemic issue, not an individual one. Aside from the fact that (again) Jesus was not white (and that whiteness did not exist as we understand it today), the fact that Metaxas spotlights him to ask whether he had white privilege is to miss the point entirely. It’s also curious that he ties the concept of white privilege to the notion of sin. From a theological pe…

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

By Daniel Silliman

…nd fundamentalists were as people, just like the vast majority of white Americans right alongside them. They were no different. But what apocalypticism did was give white evangelicals a framework and a rationale for fighting the Civil Rights movement, for example. In the last days, they insisted, there will be lawlessness. So they saw the Civil Rights movement as an example of people who break the law. Whiteness influenced these evangelical theolo…

Obama’s Gay Marriage Support Shocks Black Church

By Anthea Butler

…it comes out of his faith, it elicits a visceral response from African-American Christians who have staked their spiritual and social lives on the institution of marriage. The admiration in the African-American community for the president and first lady’s marriage shines as a beacon of possibility, for married couples and singles alike. The sight of a black family in the White House is the pinnacle of what many African-American Christians believe…

Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

By Scott Blaine Swenson

…The author of Revelations suggests readers may not understand the severe trials and tribulations of their time, but reminds them that Jesus teaches in Christ all is well. Where Revelations was, “once seen as encouragement to have faith,” Schlingensiepen says, “Phelps and others use it to inspire fear.” Schlingensiepen sees the anxieties people have about change in general, as the attraction of fear-based narratives. Some people find a measure of…

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

By Sarah Posner

…the National Religious Campaign Against Torture called it “a blight on America’s spirit and soul.” Several, including Cizik and Dr. Roy Medley, General Secretary of the American Baptist Churches, noted how their own traditions thrived from the religious freedom guaranteed by the Constitution, a freedom they said people in their own faith traditions now seek to trample for Muslims. David Saperstein, executive director of the Religious Action Cente…

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

By Sammy Feldblum

…y important to decrease social distance. They have the possibility to be serious bridge-builders, because they’re respected and trusted thanks to their faith perspective. It’s funny, organizations like the National Science Foundation, when they ask you to put outreach into your grant, they’re probably not thinking “let’s have scientists go into churches.” But I do think there’s some real potential here, if we took this seriously, getting some outr…

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

By Patricia Miller

…urch because they’re basically stuck in a box of their own design. By declaring that certain doctrines, such as the ban on contraception and women’s ordination, are untouchable because they are settled church teaching, Francis undercuts his argument that other teachings, such as the ban on communion for the remarried, have some wiggle room. Not only are many conservatives making what is essentially a Humanae Vitae-type argument against easing the…

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

By Joel Pitney

…ilmed and went public pretty quickly. I also shared the sermon with my district superintendent, and he filed the charge against me a couple of days later. You were charged by your superintendent because acting clergy are forbidden from engaging in same-sex relationships in the United Methodist Church? That’s correct, though many conferences don’t acknowledge this rule. That began a process of working with our Bishop to come to a “just resolution.”…