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The Truth in Transgender: Will the Episcopal Church Amend Its Rules?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…nsgender folks, as they walk down the street today, in major cities, in America, are at risk for significant violence. The Episcopal Church has an opportunity to help lift that burden.” If past experience is any indicator, Bishop Gray-Reeves is almost certainly right that the delegates to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church will likely put the brakes on any decisive changes to the Church’s rules for participation for ministry. But one h…

God is Not Interested in Religion

By Peter Laarman

…jurisdiction. A mix of fairly traditional Christians and a somewhat larger number of nature people (let’s just call them “pagans”—a perfectly good word) gathered high up in a canyon grove next to a roaring wild river, whereupon I shouted out a short sermon about how Christians really need to relax about contaminating the Easter rite with nature stuff, whereas nonbelievers might likewise relax about the bits of liturgical stuff that the Christians…

God’s Heart Has No Borders

By Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo

…ose who would be criminalized and forced into the shadows through employer sanctions. People were distraught and fearful. Many families wondered if they would be torn apart between nations, with some members deported and others getting green cards. Community coalitions quickly mobilized to deal with these new realities, and I witnessed how many of these efforts were organized by faith-based organization, and took place at local parish sites. I rea…

Beyond Adam and Eve

By Becky Garrison

…he Rev. Donald Schell, founder of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco recounts how this gay-positive church struggled with how to welcome a very attractive transgender woman who walked through their doors in the mid 1980s. Some straight men in the congregation felt odd when they learned the woman they’d felt attracted to had been born male, while some women did not want to share the bathroom with her. After a month or so this pe…

Bless Your Heart! The Religious Right Tries to Be Civil

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ns that have been on the rise since the passage of Prop 8. In California’s Santa Clara County, for instance, it was reported that violent crimes against gays and lesbians rose 15 percent in 2008. Santa Clara County District Attorney Jay Boyarsky noted,: My belief from having done this work for many years is that surges in types of hate incidents are linked to the headlines and controversies of the day. Marriage equality and Proposition 8 have been…

“Ex-Gay” is Anti-Gay, Disguised as Compassion

By Tanya Erzen

…e should come out of the closet. On an overcast day in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, reporters and protesters far outnumbered the ex-gay supporters in attendance. Jerry Falwell was scheduled to address the audience but at the last minute decided to appear via live telecast where his speech was drowned out by heckles and boos. Michael Johnston, an ex-gay who testified to a newfound heterosexuality after years of being homosexual, hurried out t…

Pretty People, Shiny Clothes: Biblical Illiteracy in NBC’s Kings

By Cynthia B. Astle

…f ever spoken) intones the famous acclamation of David, “Silas has his thousands and David his tens of thousands,” she refers not to conquering enemies, but to crazed fans, or perhaps money. Perhaps the most grating thing about Kings thus far is the unrelenting naiveté of its hero. The TV namesake of Israel’s great king seems a ninny in the face of the glamour and glitz of Silas’ court and his capital, Shiloh (which far more resembles New York or…

Quitting Religion, But Not the Practice of Prayer

By Elizabeth Drescher

…understand as having an enduring, if limited, significance. “Prayer” has a number of meanings for Nones, some of them recognizably religious, some of them, on the surface at least, not so much. At the more religious end of the spectrum is a man I interviewed last summer in Illinois who had been raised in a conservative Methodist church and who described himself as “an admirer of Jesus, but not a blind fanatic anymore.” He told me he used daily pra…

When Muhammad Ali Met Billy Graham

By Paul Harvey

…an Catholic immigration and perceived Catholics as a dire threat to the American Republic, just as some Americans perceive Muslims in the 2016 electoral cycle. Perhaps most importantly, it suggests the ways in which, for some Americans, “Muslim” elides categories of both race and religion, and stirs up deep-rooted American tropes of the bounds of racial and religious habitation. The passing of Muhammad Ali calls to mind a period both of that surve…

The Chilling Response to the Pelosi Attack isn’t Simply a Matter of Partisanship, it’s a Sign of the Right’s Embrace of Fascism

By Annika Brockschmidt

…d in the context of a Republican Party that has, along with the broader American Right, peddled a plethora of conspiracy theories in which Democrats are not merely a political opponent, but an evil, deeply un-American force, out to destroy everything the Republican base holds dear. The attacker, David DePape, had reached the only logical conclusion, if one were to believe the Right’s lies: If Democrats truly are conspiring to destroy the country,…