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Creeping Shari’ah… Ahem, Excuse Me… Biblical Law

By Julie Ingersoll

…f justice is stated: the punishment must fit the crime; there must be a comparative restitution or death. Or more recently Reconstructionist (and Tea Partier) Gary DeMar wrote that restitution is the Biblical way to deal with crime: Restitution includes compensating a person for stolen or damaged property or physical harm done to someone. Restitution laws cover a variety of circumstances: assault (Exodus 21:18–19); bodily injury (21:26–27); liabil…

Why the Church is Struggling to Hold Onto Millennial Catholics

By Kaya Oakes

…h and Religion at Notre Dame, says the situation with Catholic millennials participating in church culture is “in fact, grim.” Only 16% of millennials self-identify as Catholic according to Pew. That 16% is the group the church is struggling to hold on to. So if they are increasingly choosing the liberal side in the culture wars, are they really still Catholic? Canon Law 204.1 states that a Catholic not only has to be baptized, but also “share the…

Atheists Ignore Islamophobia at their Peril

By Chris Stedman

…he murder of a Sikh man named Balbir Singh Sodhi by a man shouting, “I’m a patriot!”) But while Harris may be convinced that he can parse arguments for profiling people who “look Muslim” from Islamophobia, the thing about words—especially words put forth by highly visible public intellectuals—is that they have consequences. Unintentional though they may be, such sentiments reinforce and perpetuate the broader cultural climate of Islamophobia. Terr…

Gambian Prez Rails Against Gay ‘Evil Empire’; Irish Priest Comes Out During Mass; Trans Talk on Tunisian TV Sparks Debate; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…tal counselor the couple had been required to see refused to certify their participation complained that that the men “suffer from madness.” The counselor is the head of an anti-equality organization, the Coalition of Baja California Families. According to this report, the mayor has been under pressure by Bishop José Isidro Macias. The couple has filed a complaint against the mayor, who could reportedly be removed from office for contempt of court…

Speaking for Hinduism in the Absence of a Conversation

By Murali Balaji

…themselves. More problematically, scholars—even those whose views were sympathetic towards Hinduism—were reluctant to engage with practicing Hindus, a departure from the study of other faiths. The religious study of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and more recently, Buddhism, in the academy has been buttressed by strong theological perspectives. Hinduism, at least in the West, still lacks that presence, and until it does, there will always be quest…

Record Numbers Voted for More Death and More Racism; Can We Really Just Come Together as a Nation?

By Peter Laarman

…posed to find a way to reconcile with them? I can’t, and I won’t. The only path forward I can see is the path of confrontation and struggle and relentless organizing for power—nonviolently, of course, but without the genteel gestures toward bipartisanship and compromise centrist Democrats are so fond of. Commentators who have been saying for some time that we’re already embroiled in a slow-rolling civil war have got it mostly right. And today’s se…

Awakening, Counter-Awakening, and the End of Church

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…icized, rigid, past. We are not passive observers, Bass writes, but active participants in shaping what’s to come. Bass herself has been at the forefront of the emergent spirituality movement, with books like Christianity for the Rest of Us (2007) and A People’s History of Christianity (2009). In an interview with Religion Dispatches, Bass talks about how this seemingly crazy, religion-infused GOP primary race is actually part and parcel of an awa…

It’s Not About Cake: Anti-Gay Vendors Want a Constitutional Right to Discriminate

By Sunnivie Brydum

…e-providers like bakeries and florists, dress-shops, hair salons, and “any number” of other businesses could claim that their services are in fact a form of constitutionally protected artistic practice. “The claim at issue here sounds as if the business can put up a sign in its window that says, ‘We sell cakes for heterosexuals only,’” Melling explained, taking ADF’s logic to its natural conclusion. “There’s an immediate consequence of that, and t…

Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, and Pro-Home Birth

By Katherine Don

…as made the connection between anti-choice legislation and birthing rights palpable, as even women who do not plan to have an abortion have been imprisoned or forced to undergo unwanted medical procedures under the auspices of anti-abortion laws. “Radical Doula” Miriam Pérez, who identifies as pro-choice, is co-founder of the Doula Project, an organization that provides doula care to women across the pregnancy spectrum. When she first became a bi…

Unprecedented Anti-LGBTQ Statement By Orthodox Church in America Should Be Christian Nationalist Warning Sign to US Orthodoxy

By Katherine Kelaidis

…Yet despite his relatively brief tenure the damage had been done. Over the past decade, the OCA has continued to follow the path that Metropolitan Jonah laid for it. It should not go unnoticed that Metropolitan Tikhon, the current head of the OCA, is also a convert from the Episcopal Church, and one who seems equally fixated on culture war issues—particular, abortion and same-sex marriage—as his predecessor. Predictably, the consequences of his le…