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New Report: Angels & Aliens in Texas Schools

By Mark A. Chancey

…syllabi, tests, handouts, lecture notes, and PowerPoint presentations for academic quality and evenhandedness toward diverse religious sensibilities (full disclosure: I was compensated for my efforts, though I’m otherwise unaffiliated with TFN). I was interested in the extent to which schools succeeded in meeting the bar set for them by federal district courts; namely, that discussions of religion should neither promote nor disparage particular r…

Post-Election, “Is The Black Church Dead?” Redux

By Anthea Butler

It seems that President Obama’s appeal to the black caucus back in September to get out the vote fell short. Facing a Senate with no African-Americans, perhaps it is time to revive Eddie Glaude’s ‘black church is dead’ argument and look at it in light of black voter turnout. Exit polling indicates so far that 10% of African-Americans showed up at the polls across the country. Where was the black church in this election? Despite get out the vote e…

Single, But Married To Jesus

By Anthea Butler

The most recent salvo in the tired, trite racial newlywed lame game is the CNN piece, “Does the Black Church Keep Black Women Single?”, written in response to a blog post on Surviving Dating. My answer is yes, d’oh! So does the white Pentecostal and evangelical church, but of course that’s not the subject of the piece. So why am I upset? Well, for starters, I think the subject is complicated, asinine, and fraught at the same time. I should know….

The Anti-Trans Hate Machine’s Conspiracies Don’t Stop at the US Border

By Annika Brockschmidt

…sequences for the lives of all LGBTQ people, is relegated to the US, think again: the opposite is true. In Europe, hate against trans people has been brewing for a while. The UK seems to be the center of this radicalization, which sees so-called “feminists” partnering with right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation to spread their bigotry. In fact, anti-trans hatred has been shown to be a pipeline to right-wing radicalization. United by t…

Harry Reid vs. Islamic Cultural Center

By Joanna Brooks

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (who is Mormon) has now weighed in against the Park51 Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan. The project should “be built someplace else,” Reid said Monday through a spokesman, after Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle demanded he take a position on the matter. It’s not a proud day for freedom of religion when a prominent member of the number two most disliked major religion in America effectiv…

Union Busting for God: Catholic Colleges Invoke “Religious Freedom” to Violate Catholic Teaching

By Kaya Oakes

…istoric connection to first-generation and working-class students.” Sister Aaron Winkleman, who teaches at Dominican University—founded by Dominican women religious in 1890—says that adjuncts at Dominican ratified their first collective bargaining agreement with the university last year. She adds that “an institution’s being Catholic doesn’t in any way preclude that institution from unionizing. On the contrary, a Catholic institution should be pro…

Raelians’ “Clitoraid” Met With Suspicion in Burkina Faso

By Joseph Laycock

…id controversy is complex precisely because it weighs questionable motives against the very real health problem of female circumcision in Africa. It also reflects the naiveté that Westerners sometimes demonstrate in condemning a cultural practice as barbaric. Raelianism was founded in 1974 by Claude Vorilhon (a.k.a. Rael), who claimed to have contact with enlightened extraterrestrials called the Elohim who genetically engineered humanity. Their mo…

Does Religion Condemn Homosexuality?

By Michael Bronski

…been taken up by contemporary LGBT Muslim groups, such as Toronto-based Salaam and US-based Al-Fatiha, and by a growing number of Muslim scholars in order to push back against the most conservative Islamic voices and open a space for Muslim gender and sexual minorities. The Internet also provides a vital resource for LGBT Muslims seeking to develop and put forward their own religious perspectives about same-sex desires and identities. Where Leviti…

Anti-Gay Violence Rages in Gambia; Conservative ‘Complementarity’ Confab; Coming Out in Iraq Can Be Death Sentence; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ica: Church fires minister for appearing in photo with gay people The Afrikaans Protestant Church fired Philip Olivier from the Groblersdal congregation after he posted a picture on Facebook showing him at a social function with gay people. According to Gay Star News, “The church charged the minister with socialising and mixing with gay people. It cited 1 Timothy 6:11 in the Bible, ‘flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, l…

7 Women Scholars On the Gender Divide in Religious Studies, the Power of Mentors, and Leading While Female

By Rebecca Barrett-Fox

…independent study with a religion professor in which I read Freud, Kierkegaard, and Tillich. CONTRIBUTORS Wendi Adamek brings historical research on medieval China to bear on contemporary issues. She is the author of The Mystique of Transmission and the forthcoming Practicescape: The Buddhists of Baoshan. Nancy Ammerman has been at the forefront of the sociology of religion for nearly three decades, starting with 1987’s Bible Believers: Fundament…