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A Queer Atheist In the Heart of Mormon Country

By Chris Stedman

…Eboo Patel has said about making sure that interfaith work includes conservative subcultures, too, and does not merely become a festival of shared liberalism,” he told me. And sure enough, as it turned out, we had a lot of different perspectives in the room—and a lot to say to one another. I was there as a liberal queer atheist, but I was just one of four keynote speakers, the others representing Jewish, Mormon, and evangelical Christian perspect…

The Threat to Democracy Runs Deep, But Mathematics Could Address the Abominable State of Representation and Voting

By Ismar Volić

…osnia is a country with no prospects, its only claim to fame the incessant flood of its fleeing youth, who barely glance in the rearview mirror as they search for a better life elsewhere. Traces of what led to Bosnia’s demise are unnervingly apparent in the United States. Our political system is a knotted web of malfunctioning processes that propagate and amplify the perils to democracy from every direction. Our elections elevate candidates who do…

Supreme Court Rules Religion is Special… This Time

By Katherine Stewart

…he one thing that they got right in this case. The U.S. has on the books a number of valuable laws against discrimination in the workplace, and all organizations (businesses, nonprofits, schools, governments) are expected to abide by these laws. Except religions, or so it now seems. According to the Tabor ruling, religious groups get a pass on the law when it comes to employees who are considered “ministerial.” The right to the free exercise of re…

Speaking with Palestinian-American Republican Who Confronted GOP at Debate

By Haroon Moghul

…n, for example, points out that he and his “massive family” are part of “a vast Palestinian community… in North Florida, nearly all of them Greek Orthodox or Catholic.” But Hassan gets the anti-Muslim bigotry, especially because it comes back to haunt him (he, an Arab Christian American, is tarred with Islamist Hamas). For those in the GOP who might be reading this, allow me to tell you: The percentage of Christians among the Palestinian populatio…

Catholic Church is Lucky it’s Just Same-Sex Marriage

By Marian Ronan

…he ostensibly unambiguous sex/gender categories invoked by religious conservatives such as the Vatican, the US bishops, and most right-wing evangelical Christian groups. And even among religious conservatives, things are getting increasingly complicated: since 1982, when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa authorizing them, sex-change operations have been not only allowed, but funded, by the Iranian government, apparently as a remedy fo…

Turn On The News: This Isn’t a Split, It’s a Tiny Sliver of Conservatives Walking Out the Door — Introducing A New Media Criticism Column

By Daniel Schultz

…leaders can address in their own contexts.” In other words, they’re conservative evangelicals who are going to stay rigidly opposed to marriage equality, but might allow women to be ordained—maybe. After all that, the pastor of a congregation that has decided to stay in the denomination for now talks about grieving for the people who have left, and—twenty-five paragraphs into the story—a denominational executive for the RCA offers an anodyne quot…

How the Study of Evangelicalism Has Blinded Us to the Problems in Evangelical Culture

By Christopher D. Cantwell

…t based upon their biography. The careers of these three self-identifying evangelicals mirrored evangelicalism’s broader rise in American politics and culture in the 1970s, linking their professional success with their personal faith commitments. Marsden, for instance, taught for more than two decades at a small, conservative Dutch Reformed school before his pioneering work earned him positions at major research universities like Duke and Notre Da…

Church=State in Putin’s Orthodox Empire?; Evangelical-Orthodox Anti-Gay Alliance; Malaysian Court Protects Transwomen; Catholicism (Still) Declining in Latin America; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Latin America: Pew Confirms Decline in Catholicism, Rise of Socially Conservative Evangelicals The Pew Forum released a study this week documenting the continuing decline of Catholicism in Latin America, which is home to nearly 40% of the world’s Catholics. From the Wall Street Journal’s coverage by Loretta Chao: Although the vast majority of respondents were raised Catholic, the percentage identifying as Catholic in the region decreased to 69% th…

New Poll Reveals That Anti-Trans Rhetoric isn’t Just Affecting Republicans and White Evangelicals

By Chrissy Stroop

…oes give us at least one indication that the relentless and virulent conservative Christian and Republican efforts to flood public discourse with anti-trans views is having an impact beyond the passage of ever more draconian state-level policies in Republican-controlled states. There’s far more in the report than can be summarized here, and I encourage everyone to read it. But this much is clear: trans Americans are facing a lopsided struggle for…

The Only Common Denominator of American Conservatism is Anti-Blackness

By Yannick Marshall

…” is a misnomer. The term obscures the fact that those identified as conservatives have varied more widely in views on national debt, religion, military excursions, the personal conduct of elected officials, political party affiliation and other putative conservative concerns than they have on the treatment of Black people. The through line of American conservatism has been the work towards the increased injury of Black people at each stage of U.S…