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The Brutality of Life for Syrian LGBTs; Saving the Anglican Church by Dissolving It; Backlash to Hindu Gay Wedding Ceremony in Indonesia; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…rancis’ teaching against judging and marginalizing LGBTs. . .The Gospel is about human rights, and equality, and about love. Instead of opposing equal rights for LGBTs, Holy Mother Church should be at the forefront of defending and protecting LGBTs persons, LGBT couples, and LGBT families.” … “Jesus was always on the side of the marginalized. Jesus was always on the side of human rights and human dignity. . .I challenge any bishop to look an LGBT…

Romney on Israel: More GOP Than LDS

By Sarah Posner

…fundamentally critical of the Zionist project because our scriptures talk about the return of Jews to the Holy Land,” said Peterson, “there’s certainly room to disagree about the form that it’s taken or specific policies of the Israeli government. Some are going to be very sympathetic. You take someone like Glenn Beck who’s obviously very closely aligned with the government of Israel but others who are extremely critical and embarrassed that Glen…

Passover with Mohammed: A Jewish Journalist in Yemen

By Sam Kestenbaum

…has a thick goatee. When I tell him I’m a Jew he takes out his iPhone and wants to play me a song. Hebrew lettering appears on the bottom of the screen and a yarmulke-clad singer stands on a stage, microphone in hand. When he begins singing, in Arabic, Ahmed knows every word. He sings about chewing qat, about falling in love. “Most of the Jews here went to Israel, but they stayed Yemeni—listen to his accent! He’s a perfect Sana’ani. He sounds jus…

What Ben Carson’s Pyramid Theory Might Say About His Foreign Policy

By David Krueger

…ind buried treasure in it.” Hoeh goes on challenge the scholarly consensus about the identity of the known builder of the pyramid, the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu (or as he’s known in the Greek, Cheops). First, Hoeh exploits some of the uncertainty about Khufu’s family line by asserting that he was not Egyptian, but instead came from a foreign sheep-herding people who were of a “different race.” Hoeh then asserts that Cheops was not an “idolater” like…

Spiritualism and Sex Meet Evangelical Censorship, 19th-Century-Style

By Leigh Eric Schmidt

…dore Schroeder. But I could never make one of those work. How do you feel about the cover? I feel ecstatic about the cover—and not just because it has two nearly nude figures on it. In Craddock’s diary she called attention to William Bouguereau’s painting of Eros carrying Psyche off into the heavens. She explicitly pictured herself as Psyche and her angelic guide as Eros. In other words, she saw her own spiritual experience mirrored in Bouguerea…

RDBook: A City Too Busy To Hate

By Michael A. Elliott

…Lefever and Page about their book and how their project led them to think about place. RD: This is a book about looking backward into the past, to a difficult moment in history. How well do you think the city of Atlanta does that? Page: Atlanta used to bill itself as the “City too busy to hate.” Lefever: Maybe it should be the “City too busy to remember.” We can see this physically, where we tear down building after building here. In terms of Civ…

Purpose Driven Politics: Rick Warren’s Civil Service

By Bill Berkowitz

…course of the early part of the campaign, there have been questions raised about whether the evangelical vote is up for grabs; whether new concerns about AIDS in Africa, poverty and the environment could trump—or at least neutralize—such issues as abortion, stem cell research and gay rights, and bring some evangelical voters to the Obama column. The Obama campaign has been actively meeting with and seeking to convince evangelical voters that he is…

‘Always Pray to the Father’: Mormon Leader Calls Desire for Knowledge of Heavenly Mother ‘Arrogant and Unproductive’

By Holly Welker

…ds to explaining why it’s “arrogant and unproductive” to seek to know more about Heavenly Mother. Renlund begins his discussion of Heavenly Mother by summarizing what little is known about her before justifying her absence from Latter-day Saint prayer and worship: The Savior taught his disciples, “Always pray unto the father in my name.” We follow this pattern and direct our worship to our Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ and do not pra…

‘Exporting Garbage to the Nations’: Conservative Christian Rifts Spreading Like Cracked Glass

By Frederick Clarkson and André Gagné

…ything under the sun.” Stolzfus says that “maybe” some of what was written about their editor was true, but that “it was not true about us.” Charles Bausmann, the leader of “the group” (who lived in Lancaster), shot video from inside the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, and soon thereafter fled to Russia. Stolzfus complains about media coverage and the SPLC, and that they were accused of “being Russian agents.” Taking a page out of the Trump playbook…

Can We Ask Mitt About Mormonism’s Racist Past?

By Darron T. Smith

…ings of his faith that could provide a glimpse into his own racial beliefs about black people. Little has been said about his record on civil and social justice, including during his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts. Instead, what we often hear from the campaign on matters of race is a reference to what his father accomplished as governor of Michigan. But Mitt Romney was 31 years old when the priesthood ban was finally lifted. That accounts for…