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Amway, Religious Right Pyramid Scheme, Returns to the Motherland

By Bill Berkowitz

…attacks against them. At the same time, let’s acknowledge that America’s increasing decadence is giving aid and comfort to the enemy… Radical Islamists were surely watching in July when the Senate voted on procedural grounds to do away with the Federal Marriage Amendment. This is like handing moral weapons of mass destruction to those who use America’s decadence to recruit more snipers and hijackers and suicide bombers. Are these the acts of a re…

The War Within: Religion and Our Tangled Relationship with Our Bodies

By Michelle Lelwica

…ing the assumptions that enabled so many Christians to overlook the utter inconsistencies with Trump’s message and Jesus’s teachings. The other book I want to write is inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, in which Coates recounts to his fifteen-year-old son how America’s abusive history toward blacks continues to shape the pervasive racism that structures our society today. As I read this brilliantly heart-breaking and challeng…

What Irish Marriage Vote Means for Catholic Church; The Lonely Fight for Equality in Belize; Progress and Backlash in Tunisia; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e. According to a Catholic News Service article (which was cross-posted by NCR), Francis said: “The covenant of love between a man and a woman, a covenant for life, cannot be improvised; it cannot be done from one day to the next,” he said. … Just a few weeks ago Francis “called men and women God’s ‘masterwork,’ adding that Jesus ‘begins his miracles with this masterwork, in a marriage, in a wedding feast: a man and a woman.’ More from NCR’s Manso…

Restoring Dignity: The Employee Free Choice Act

By Peter Laarman

…a question?? I was moved beyond measure to see the inauguration-related concert at the Lincoln Memorial open with Bruce Springsteen’s “Come On Up To The Rising” and end with Pete Seeger leading the multitude in singing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” Bringing Seeger up there wasn’t corny. It connected this moment to the last great economic crisis of 75 years ago. And I was glad that Pete made sure to include this little-known verse of G…

The Incredible Shrinking Catholic Church

By Paul Gorrell

…ng encouraged to take their spiritual business elsewhere. We have seen an increase in the number of American politicians who are asked to remove themselves from communion lines and, recently, priests have even denied parishioners communion if they vote for a political candidate who favors abortion rights. This exclusion from the sacrament is essentially a form of excommunication. Dogma Over Diplomacy Ironically, at a time when many earnest believe…

Pastor Convicted in Lisa Miller Child Kidnapping Case

By Peter Montgomery

…d that as he drove home from the border, Mr. Zodhiates tried to call a cellphone number registered to Liberty Counsel, an evangelical legal group. That cellphone number has sometimes been used by Mathew D. Staver, the founder of Liberty Counsel, dean of the Liberty University Law School in Lynchburg, Va., and a leader of Ms. Miller’s defense team. The RICO filed by Jenkins includes information that RD readers learned last year from Sarah Posner’s…

In the Papal Pocket: Benedict XVI and the Press

By Mary E. Hunt

…and a nation-state. The Vatican City State has been a sovereign country since 1929; it has about 1000 inhabitants governed by the Pope, and, in his absence, by the College of Cardinals; all of whom are chosen by him. In the opinion of many people it is as secretive, punitive, and dismissive of human rights as some dictatorships. These are serious issues that warrant full discussion, not glossing over as if the correct liturgical colors and Gregor…

‘Murder Among the Mormons,’ Latest True Crime Doc From Netflix, Highlights Issues of Faith, Skepticism, and Authenticity

By Benjamin E. Park

…y, Mormonism’s highest governing body. The other two members of the presidency, including the prophet, Spencer W. Kimball, were both incapacitated due to health, leaving Hinckley in charge. Yet his background in media made him uniquely positioned for the crisis. Though inextricably linked to Hofmann through his role facilitating a number of document purchases, he also had an eye to the future, envisioning a church that was much more media-savvy an…

Islamic Intellectual Leadership at a Crossroads

By Amina Wadud

…not Tariq Ramadan feels comfortable being included among them. We have an increasing number of men recognized as intellectuals whose self-appointed role as leaders gives me pause. Is this the result of having leading ideas that we all can follow and benefit from, like these three men? Or what about the question of the integrity of leadership, does it bring the scholarly contributions under question? Whatever happens in the future, if women’s ways…

New Report: Angels & Aliens in Texas Schools

By Mark A. Chancey

…g them as authoritative for the students. They also acknowledged the existence and importance of competing religious beliefs regarding the Bible and its stories without adopting one perspective as their guiding framework. When they discussed Judaism, they examined it as a religion in its own right, not merely as Christianity’s foil or outdated predecessor. And they treated the Bible as a set of texts worthy of rigorous study and careful examinatio…