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NC’s Gay Marriage Ban: “It’s Going to Hurt the Church”

By Nicole Greenfield

…astor of the Brooklyn-based Revolution NYC, had traveled south to his home state—the state that, decades ago, witnessed firsthand the rise, and then the fall, of his televangelist parents’ PTL ministry—to speak out against a ballot initiative up for vote tomorrow. If passed, Amendment 1 would modify North Carolina’s constitution to declare “marriage between one man and one woman” as “the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized….

Does War Make Sense? Science and Religion on the Battlefield

By Nathan Schneider

…h the early years of the Cold War, as the superpowers raced to build the fastest fighter planes and pack the most megatons into their nukes. But soon this logic unraveled too, as it became clear that neither could fight a thermonuclear war without being destroyed in the process. The science of energy, Bousquet writes, with its promise of a comprehensible formula for the modern battlefield, had blown itself into absurdity. As the push for greater f…

Modernity’s Fraternity: What Dan Brown Gets Right

By Samuel Biagetti

…ans, affluent gentlemen, and those with philosophical and scientific interests, started to join the lodges, drawn by their social conviviality and their traditions of ritual and secrecy. This custom of including non-stonemasons in the lodges, called “speculative Freemasonry,” spread from Scotland to England, and then took off as an international movement. Masonic initiations included some amount of mild ritual hazing, intended to disorient the ini…

Who’s to Blame for BP?

By David True

…ain. Mr. Obama has become Mr. Hayward’s accomplice, not really at fault, just standing by. Many of the president’s critics are frustrated because no matter how much they rant and rave, they can’t seem to cause him to do the same. How can he maintain such self-control, they seem to ask, when he has lost all control of the situation? Taking responsibility and assigning blame offer a sense of control on our part; despite the spill, we tell ourselves,…

Updated: My Work on Confederate Monuments Leaves This Christian Ethicist Distrustful of Calls for Reconciliation and Healing

By Ryan Andrew Newson

…ing to reckon with the immediate past was considered toxic, passé, and—industrialists pointed out—bad for business. These voices calling for reunion won the day, and what followed could not be genuinely described as a painful but necessary process of truth-telling and the material righting of wrongs. Rather, a cheap reconciliation was rendered, which served—at the beginning of Jim Crow, no less—to hide our continued animosities from ourselves, rej…

Hookers for Jesus: Sex and Salvation on the Strip

By Nicole Greenfield

…ing fans among the expo’s 40,000 visitors. “Some Christians Think We are Just Cheap Harlots” “A lot of guys pose for photos with us and when they go home and look up what’s on our T-shirts, they learn what we’re about,” Lobért explained to Telegraph reporter Philip Sherwell. “We call it booby-trapping.” But those who attend adult entertainment fairs aren’t exactly Lobért’s target audience. Her conspicuous appearance is also meant to attract the ot…

How Not to Support Obamacare

By Peter Laarman

…. I was referring to employer plans when I said that. But here is why we must still insist that everyone buy approved levels of coverage through the exchanges. Unless everyone participates, we can’t make it work for those at greater risk.” Franklin Roosevelt wasn’t the least bit preachy, but when he spoke people always heard and felt the underlying moral basis for his policies. Obama, a self-proclaimed convert to liberal Christianity, can’t seem t…

Celebrate Jesus with Weird Merchandise!

By Gwynne Watkins

…ter by marshmallow chicks and colorful baskets, rather than bring theology into it. But there are always exceptions. One is the Oriental Trading Company. Founded to create cheap plastic toys for carnivals, OTC is now a leading supplier of cheap plastic stuff for church groups and Christian schools. Their party supply catalog always contains a small section dedicated to Jesus merchandise, which results in some odd juxtapositions. Here, for example,…

Are American Christians “Persecuted”?

By Eric C. Miller

…ce of discrimination against gays. Here, too, clearer definitions of persecuted and persecutor seem appropriate. As they continue to transition from a history of overt moral condemnation to a defensive, liberal posture in keeping with public reason, conservative Christians must continue to refine their strategies for engaging the public square. It remains to be seen what role persecution – or persecution-ish – arguments will play going forward. Fo…

Memo to David Brooks: Francis Is Not Naïve For Criticizing Capitalism

By Peter Laarman

…he prophets and ultimately to sanctify private greed. How this happened is a tale for another time. Suffice it to say for now that Protestantism’s accommodation of capitalism, even its role in forming modern capitalist ideology, stands as a peculiar outlier within the overall range of Christian teaching through the centuries. “Outlier” is a polite word for it; a stronger but by no means inapposite term would be heresy….