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Will Iowa’s Abortion Ban Respect Religious Freedom?

By Christine Ryan

…t interest. The challenge for states that outlaw abortion is that they typically allow exceptions in cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormalities, and medical emergencies. When secular exceptions exist, Supreme Court precedent (established, notably, by Republican Justices) generally compels states to also permit religious exceptions. After all, a religiously motivated abortion doesn’t undermine the state’s asserted interest in ‘fetal life’ any more…

Mormon Rejection of Trump Embarrassing for Evangelicals?

By Neil J. Young

…tates, the LDS Church took the rare step of responding directly to a political candidate, issuing a statement that affirmed religious freedom and emphasized Mormon-Muslim partnerships in humanitarian causes. Aside from these political differences, Mormons have recoiled at the personality and style of Trump. Conservative, family-oriented, and devout, Mormons are a sharp contrast to the brash and profane Trump, and they have expressed disapproval fo…

American Christianity Is Changing Fast: Five Stories to Watch in 2016

By Richard Flory

…enging traditional Church leaders as legitimate representatives of the African American community. Will new cleavages appear within evangelicalism (or deepen within the Black Church), pitting these factions against each other? Or, will those groups that are not invested in either the evangelical industrial complex, or remaining culture war issues like LGBT rights, move to create alternative institutions that better serve their needs? 3. The Franci…

An Unholy Holy Week: Is the All-Male Rule of the Roman Catholic Church Self-Destructing?

By Anne Eggebroten

…s chosen not to leave the church but to work for change. Her most dramatic call for change came in 1992 when she tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II as protest against child sexual abuse on Saturday Night Live. She and others have pinpointed one source of the problem: canon law, which does not require cases of abuse to be reported to the police. Instead, a culture of extreme secrecy has prevailed, codified in Vatican norms issued in 1962 requirin…

The Faith Outreach Canard

By Sarah Posner

…ic groups, and the particular makeup of the 2010 electorate. At the Monkey Cage, political scientist John Sides observes that GOP victories in swing districts with Democratic incumbents had other causes: GOP gains had much more to do a simpler fact: when the political winds are blowing against a party, it’s the incumbents in the swing districts that are most likely to be blown out of office. And his colleague Eric McGhee notes that 2010 looks like…

Special Hell: Progressive Catholics Reckon With the Rise of Trump

By Patricia Miller

…nt for Trump and many Catholics joined the non-voting defectors. That’s a scandal that calls into question the moral standing and integrity of most—not all—Catholics today,” Marquette University moral theologian Dan Maguire told RD. To many, Catholic support for Trump feels like a repudiation of the Catholic social justice tradition. “Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric and consequent election are rooted in fear and hate. This approach violates the g…

55% of Utah Mormons Believe LGBT People can “Change”

By Joanna Brooks

…. After massive expressions of protest from Mormon and non-Mormon LGBT advocates and allies, Packer’s speech was revised for web publication, and a Church spokesman offered a statement—incredibly progressive by LDS standards and timetables—that denounced bullying and acknowledged gay people as gay (rather than using the conventional LDS term “same-gender attraction,” which downplays the reality of LGBT experience). Still, my friend observed, most…

The Devil is in the Details

By Amina Wadud

…y, and I don’t want anything hanging over my head about local logistics, because I can’t take them with me and I don’t want to have any overdue amounts on that account either. Meanwhile, I am still collecting prayer requests and that means praying now and still remembering to call their names at Arafat. Yesterday I learned that a dear, dear friend has just gotten a cancer diagnosis. I’ll be really blessed to make a du’a for her speedy and complete…

What Pence and Kaine Reveal About Divides in Catholicism

By Patricia Miller

…Progress: …if this sort of dissenting spirit was unique among modern American Catholics, one could plausibly argue that the United States has created an environment that bifurcates Catholics in unusual ways. But it’s not: In 2014, a global survey conducted by Univision found that most of the planet’s Catholics disagree with the church on birth control, abortion rights, divorce, and priestly celibacy. But of course what really divides the left and…

Do Space Aliens Need Baptism? The View From Gliese 581g

By Paul Wallace

…, a well-known Danish astronomer of the late 16th century, rejected Copernicanism not only because it contradicted the Aristotelian physics of his day, but because it increased the size of the universe by several orders of magnitude. In Brahe’s view, Copernicus’ Sun-centered model expanded the gap between Saturn (at the time the highest of the planets) and the sphere of the stars to outlandish proportions. God, he reasoned, would not waste so much…