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The Vatican v. Protestant Free Thinkers

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…, represented was the triumph of a new kind of mathematical science, where numbers and computation were esteemed in a whole new way. Copernicus, be sure to recall, did not yet have access to the telescope, so he was basing a number of his computations on things he could not see. In this brave new world, then, the scientists were also casting their “faith in things not seen.” It’s just that what they “saw” was perceived to run counter to the Roman…

After More Mass Shootings It’s Time to Call Out White Supremacy in the Pews

By Peter Laarman

…what’s going on, but too few seem capable of saying it. We now have a fair number of political and civic leaders who are willing to say the word trauma and talk about the all-pervasive violence in this culture, not to mention the extent of mental disturbance and the fact that American civilians have more assault rifles in their possession than does the U.S. military. All well and good. But we have too few leaders who will talk about the deeper roo…

Mike Johnson isn’t Just Your Average Christian Right Avatar — He’s Influenced by Fringe Movements Unfamiliar to Most Political Analysts

By Annika Brockschmidt

…rce behind the fall of Roe v. Wade, which protected the right to abortion, last summer. Constitutional attorney (and fellow RD correspondent) Andrew Seidel warns that Johnson and his allies in the Christian Right, specifically the ADF, seek to rewrite American law: “The goal is to move away from the words carved into the Supreme Court building, ‘equal justice under law’ and towards legal supremacy for the ‘right’ kind of conservative Christian. Th…

“That Guy In Rome”: A Catholic Town in Idaho Where The Pope is a Heretic

By Jason Wilson

…was only a short leap to Schuckardt’s claim that the CMRI was actually the last embattled remnant of the true Church. In 1968, he had himself consecrated as a bishop by the Old Catholic Church (which had itself split from Catholicism over doctrinal disagreements in the late 19th century). He then began attracting priests, religious and laypeople to his congregation, and to the region. CMRI expanded around the world in the 1970s and 1980s, opening…

Harry Reid vs. Islamic Cultural Center

By Joanna Brooks

…t’s not a proud day for freedom of religion when a prominent member of the number two most disliked major religion in America effectively sides against a honest project by the number one most disliked major religion in America. Especially when Mormons have just recently come through our own years-long struggle to build an LDS temple in Center City Philadelphia after Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter tried to extract a six-figure sum from the Churc…

Religious Opposition To LGBT Equality Softening

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…nd other Christians marching together at Pride. In recent years, the small number of Christians who turn up to protest against Pride have been vastly outnumbered by the Christians participating in it. Hill also noted religious support in the UK last April for a new law “to allow religious elements in civil partnerships, while last year the Quakers became the first major Christian denomination to resolve to carry out same-sex marriages.” Even here…

Who Would the Buddha Bomb?

By Danny Fisher

…e a need for Buddhist chaplains, and several have been commissioned in the last fifteen years. (Two of them, the Army’s Somya Malasri and the Navy’s Aroon Seeda, were among the attendees at the White House gathering.) Bosco notes, however, that many Buddhists in the U.S. military have retreated to online communities due to the prevailing support for nonviolence among American converts to Buddhism. “When viewed in the larger social and cultural con…

Updated: G-O-D Plays a Bit Part in First GOP Debate

By Daniel Schultz

…en for thinking that Reagan was God, or at least a patron saint, given the number of times he was name-checked in the debate. Mostly it went like this. The candidates did talk about hot-button social issues, but they held back from claiming religious sponsorship of their ideas. It’s not clear if they’d gotten the memo about not antagonizing religiously unaffiliated voters, or if they simply didn’t see much advantage in differentiating themselves a…

Leper Messiah: A Jesus Freak’s Search for the Meaning of Bowie—A Critical Novella

By Mark Dery

…nges—a whole clothes rack’s-worth of them, each more jaw-dropping than the last: sci-fi samurai in a tear-away kimono; camp Flash Gordon in a skin-tight jumpsuit; gay-pride sumo wrestler in a sequined jockstrap; Surrealist burlesque dancer shimmying in a man-bra made of glitter-skinned mannequin hands. Freeze-framed in the eerie pulsations of a strobe, with the raunchy proto-punk of the Spiders squalling behind him, Bowie—Ziggy?—seemed truly Not o…

The Progress of Christ in Commercial America: A Review of Chris Lehmann’s The Money Cult

By Peter Laarman

…delights in surfacing little-known factoids. These include the remarkable number of commercial hucksters who were preachers or else preachers’ kids (e.g., Richard Bolles of What Color is Your Parachute? fame—a former Episcopal priest) and the equally remarkable number of notable preachers who had strong commercial instincts and/or commercial roots (ranging from 18th-century superstar evangelist George Whitefield to 19th-century revivalist giant C…