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LDS General Conference in the “Mormon Moment”

By Joanna Brooks

…ave asserted the Christianity of Mormon belief for national audiences, the number one reaction has come from Christians who seek to correct my understanding of my faith and remind me that Mormons are not, in their eyes, Christians. Some assert that they’ll be praying for my mistaken soul (and the soul of my Jewish husband too). Others seek to engage in a friendlier conversational exchange about whether Mormons profess the Nicene Creed. (We do not…

Neuroscience Says Evil is “Over”: Not So Fast…

By Paul Wallace

…. Rosenbaum addresses the fetishizing of fMRI images, the ideology that conflates causation and correlation, and the shifting semantics — evil recast as “non-empathy” by one esteemed psychologist (echoing, interestingly, the traditional Christian understanding of evil as a privation). But it’s the image of scientists as priests that caught my attention. It’s an image that has a lot going for it. Before I say what exactly it has going for it, howev…

New Study Touts Success of “Praying Away the Gay”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ications, however, will stop the religious right from totally blowing this flawed research up into the proof it needs that you can “pray away the gay.” Aside from the obviously flawed methodology and the laughably small sample size, the biggest problem with this study is that all of the “therapy” given to these 98 poor souls was religiously-based—and more specifically evangelical Christian. The power of religious belief to sway one’s behavior cann…

The New Age Fantasy of a Celtic Church that Revered Nature and the Divine Feminine Never Existed — So What?

By Ed Simon

…teach us. Caitlin Corning explains in The Celtic and Roman Traditions: Conflict and Consensus in the Early Medieval Church that, even though at one point historians may have had a romantic attachment to the idea, more recently “scholars have abandoned the term Celtic Church believing it to be too closely associated with inaccurate ideas.” However, as her study makes clear, the general public is in no way allergic to this constructed history given…

“Pregnancy is Not a Disease”: Birth of an Anti-Contraception Rallying Cry

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ein women’s reproductive organs exist for a clearly-discernible purpose, reflecting a sacred and beneficent design. Starting Over So, anyway, that’s where we are. The notion that pregnancy is not an illness draws, I daresay uneasily, from a number of sources. There’s the classical notion that a thing’s nature is derived from its purpose, and the purpose of female bodies is to bear children. There’s the persistent early modern fear that women, espe…

Picasso’s Sacred Monster Eats Chicago: A Mystery Solved?

By Jeremy Biles

…even Year Itch pose has taken up temporary residence in Pioneer Court, the flare of her windblown skirt providing shade to spectators. But it is the untitled Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza that remains Chicago’s most iconic artwork—a sculpture that owes some of its mystery to the mythical resonance hidden in its form. If it Quacks Like a Sphinx The “Chicago Picasso” has long been a source of bewildered fascination; all around it, brows furrow ev…

Ex-Gay Conversion Therapy: Choosing Religion Over Sex

By Lynne Gerber

…or of existing commitments—especially when those commitments are seen as reflections of God’s will. And while a pull that strong still does not make heterosexual married life possible for many homosexually-oriented men, for those whom it does it is important to acknowledge that changing orientation and desire sufficiently to maintain one relationship with one person of the opposite sex is far lower a bar for successful change than wholesale shift…

Change v. Change at NPR

By Warren Throckmorton

…lyzed Monday’s story in light of the negative reaction from listeners. Briefly, Alix Spiegel interviewed Rich Wyler, founder of Journey into Manhood, and Peterson Toscano, a man who went spent 17 years in an unsuccessful effort to change his orientation. Schumacher-Matos correctly points out that much of the negative reaction centered on the presentation of Wyler and Toscano as representative of two sides of a current debate in psychology. In fact…

From Licking Floors to Praying for an Inept Government, Churches React to C-19

By Daniel Schultz

…sed by the virus. “One pastor said half of his church is ready to lick the floor, to prove there’s no actual virus,” said King, lead pastor at Second Baptist church in Conway, Ark. … “In your more politically conservative regions, closing is not interpreted as caring for you. It’s interpreted as liberalism, or buying into the hype,” said King, whose church draws about 1,100 worshipers on a typical Sunday. I’m not sure what’s daffier or more offens…

The Year of the Abusive Priest

By Anthea Butler

…ns around its impervious leader. Making matters worse, the Pope tried to deflect from the mounting worldwide criticism with a stab at his detractors during his Palm Sunday homily, stating “Jesus leads us toward the courage not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion.” I beg to differ, but this sexual abuse scandal is not petty gossip. It is hardcore fact. In another case, almost at the Vatican City doorstep, stud…