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Conservative Christianity and Its Discontents

By Karl Giberson and Randall J. Stephens

…s when they discovered he accepted evolution. Others have come to the microphone after a talk and implied that, in accepting evolution, he was “under the influence of the devil.” Collins regularly gets critical commentary from non-believers like Jerry Coyne and Sam Harris, but, as he has said, the “nastiest” messages come from fellow Christians, “infuriated that someone who claims to be a believer could say these things about the truth of the evol…

Are We Entering the End Times for Mainline Seminaries?

By Elesha Coffman

…s in both the number of churches that could support such positions and the number of people eager to take the more challenging, but lower paying, church jobs that remained. Some seminaries shifted their missions to serve the academy or society more broadly, while others trained more part-time, second-career and lay pastors. These shifts were less abrupt than decisions to close or merge a seminary, but they were often quite jarring for faculty and…

White Evangelical Leaders Already Distancing Themselves from the “81-Percenters”

By Neil J. Young

…evangelical leaders have historically characterized their faith members’ influence in recent elections. Following George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, to take one example, evangelical outlets breathlessly reported on how evangelical voters had been critical to Bush’s victory. And four years ago, many of those same outlets touted evangelical support for Mitt Romney against President Obama’s successful re-election bid. None of this commentary sough…

Trump the Totem: Like Other Fascist Leaders, Trump has Turned from Man to Symbol — And That’s the Danger

By Robert P. Jones

…erence (CPAC), clad in a coat and tie paired with American flag shorts and flip-flops, holding the US Constitution in one hand and a magic wand in the other. At the individual level, a plethora of hats, t-shirts, bumper stickers, digital art (often featuring Jesus and Trump), tattoos, and, of course, Trump’s “God Bless the USA”-branded Bible flooded into public spaces. This explosion of symbolic material was the result of the energy unleashed by t…

Right Wingers Say “Gay” is Out, But Try Putting “Unnatural Vice” On a Bumper Sticker

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…eny minority of people may take away their right to tell gays and lesbians that God will send them to hell for all eternity — out of love, mind you. But, then again, anti-gay Evangelicals have a right to be afraid. After all, researchers say the actual number of Evangelicals may well be “as small as 7 percent of the total adult population.” Which means Evangelicals know just how effective a small number of people can be at taking away the rights o…

Pope Francis Has Painted Himself into a Corner on Women Deacons

By Mary E. Hunt

…s” conundrum Parallel to the diaconal growth is the steady increase in the number of women engaged in ministries of all sorts. Whether in campus ministry or prison work, in parishes where they now outnumber priests in the U.S., in religious communities or religious education, women around the world do an increasingly large share of the Roman Catholic Church’s ministry without being ordained or having decision-making power. No wonder it occurred to…

Are You Rapture Ready?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…n exactly 7,000 years from the date that God first warned people about the flood. He said the flood happened in 4990 B.C., on what would have been May 21 in the modern calendar. God gave Noah one week of warning. Since one day equals 1,000 years for God, that means there was a 7,000-year interval between the flood and rapture. “We hope that anyone would get a Bible out and try and prove that this is wrong,” he said. I suspect the advent of May 22,…

Conservative Hardliners at Synod Prompt Question: “What Are We Doing Here?”

By Patricia Miller

…m the first small group discussions held this week indicate that a sizable number of bishops believe that the preparatory document is all doom-and-gloom and doesn’t do enough to celebrate the sizable number of Catholics who are successfully leading a traditional Catholic family life, reports John Allen: The synod’s final report ‘should begin with hope rather than failures, because a great many people already do successfully live the Gospel’s good…

Latina in America: What CNN Got Wrong

By Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

…e growth of Pentecostalism globally and among Latino/as regionally was briefly emphasized. The documentary than turned to bilingual Catholic parishes in the St. Louis Missouri area. In one parish, Latino/as are the saviors of the community, bringing in numbers (and I suspect dollars) to support a failing community. In the more substantially covered parish Latino/as are marginalized by Anglos in their community. One member goes so far as to questio…

Was Ghana Anti-Gay Scare Just Politics?

By Warren Throckmorton

…ed “to get rid of these people in the society.” Some observers believe the number of sexual minorities may have been inflated in order to whip up opposition to homosexuality which could advance the standing of conservative politicians. Graham Knight, a British blogger living in Ghana, recently wrote that the claim of 8,000 sexual minorities has little support in fact. Knight concluded, in a blog post titled Did Ghana register 8000 homosexuals? The…