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Are We Entering the End Times for Mainline Seminaries?

By Elesha Coffman

…mmonly labeled mainline—United Methodist, Lutheran (ELCA), Presbyterian (PCUSA), Episcopal, American Baptist, United Church of Christ and Disciples of Christ—peaked in membership in the 1960s, two generations ago. Downward trends in membership have affected seminaries in multiple ways, financial and missional. “Rich endowments can stave off the inevitable so long that, when closure comes, it feels sudden rather than inevitable.” On average, sponso…

How to Make Nones and Lose Money: Study Shows Cost of Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals

By Kaya Oakes

…ending church, the social pressure to be charitable declines. Interestingly, however, these same individuals mirror the statistical notion that even though an increasing number of Americans consider themselves religiously unaffiliated, that doesn’t necessarily mean they do not believe in God. Botton and Perez-Trugila indicate that sex abuse scandals cost the church money and participation, but not necessarily faith. For many Millennials and member…

Leper Messiah: A Jesus Freak’s Search for the Meaning of Bowie—A Critical Novella

By Mark Dery

…Dear Leader he insisted his fear-sickened people love him…or else, booming, “I, the LORD your God”—always with the screaming CapsLock, like some online whack job—“am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me…” (Exodus 20:5). Happily, Yaweh was safely chained in the basement of the pop-Christian unconscious, the Old Testament, which most Jesus kids I knew seemed to view…

After More Mass Shootings It’s Time to Call Out White Supremacy in the Pews

By Peter Laarman

…eep openly. Weep for a country that seems irredeemably lost in so many ways, a country where, in the words of Paul Simon’s equally haunting “American Tune”: I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered I don’t have a friend who feels at ease I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered or driven to its knees The thing is, we do know what’s going on, but too few seem capable of saying it. We now have a fair number of political and civic leaders wh…

Raelians’ “Clitoraid” Met With Suspicion in Burkina Faso

By Joseph Laycock

…med Eve. When Clonaid refused to offer any evidence of their accomplishment, however, the claim was dismissed as a hoax. The media grew hostile toward Raelianism and Clonaid and in 2003 sealed documents suggested that Clonaid existed in name only and had no actual assets. 2003 was also the year that Rael became interested in female circumcision while on a speaking tour in Western Africa. (Raelians have been making missionary trips to Africa since…

Anti-Gay Violence Rages in Gambia; Conservative ‘Complementarity’ Confab; Coming Out in Iraq Can Be Death Sentence; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…acting under Iraqi government cover are leading the persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Iraqis, sharply increasing their risk of death or exile, a report has found. LGBT Iraqis lack family or community support and the government refuses to offer any meaningful protection, according to the report When Coming Out Is A Death Sentence published by the group. It said the central government was likely to be complicit in a recen…

7 Women Scholars On the Gender Divide in Religious Studies, the Power of Mentors, and Leading While Female

By Rebecca Barrett-Fox

…d in two broad sorts of questions: the recurring set (why do people believe, do, and experience things that I find surprising or implausible?) and the more personal set triggered by my religious quest and my reading of Mary Daly (why is Christianity so oppressive?). The first question led to my dissertation on Catholic devotional practices (e.g., devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, Sacred Heart, and Jesus’ wounds), all of which seemed strange to me…

‘My Name is Legion’: Sources and Forces of White Supremacy in the U.S.

By R. Drew Smith

…he mid-1990s there were reported to be more than 2,000 hate group web sites, 150,000 to 200,000 subscribers to racist publications, approximately 100 operative telephone hate-lines, and one hundred fifty independent racist radio and television shows airing weekly to millions of sympathizers. With the dramatic expansion over the last two decades of internet coverage and of cable and satellite media outlets, electronic access to hate group and white…

Religious Leaders Need ‘Empty the Pews’ Which Chronicles the Darker Side of the ‘Nones’ Phenomenon

By Kaya Oakes

…chers like Andreea Nica. By dividing the book into sections about queerness, family, trauma, mission trips, and intellectual evolutions, the editors have given readers a kind of map that will be helpful in guiding them to the essays that, perhaps, best reflect their own story or set of interests. But I do hope that religious leaders will pick up this book, if only because, after my own book on Nones came out, so many of them have contacted me aski…

Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…sand dollars for a “Warrior Retreat,” didn’t they? And native religions are, well, barbaric and cruel. The prosecution would then be compelled to bring in their “experts” to argue that a non-Indian, who allegedly learned to do this ceremony from “shamans” all over the world, did the sweat lodge the wrong way. Ray would be guilty of manslaughter by way of “malpractice” even if he is an “expert” on the sweat lodge. We’ve been there before. Experts…