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

By Peter Montgomery

…mation of marriage. “For on earth marriage binds us across the ages in the flesh, across families in the flesh, and across the fearful and wonderful divide of man and woman, in the flesh. This is not ours to alter,” it reads. “It is ours, however, to encourage and celebrate….This we affirm.” But in practice, it ended with something more significant—a strengthening of alliances. The event forged and deepened relationships across faith lines. “This…

Mormon Leaders Slam ‘Counterfeit’ Gay Families; Vatican Resists Gay Ambassador; ISIS Executes Man for Homosexuality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…‘family shame’ and violence Reuters’ Alisa Tang reported this week on the number of LGBT people in “largely patriarachal and conservative” Asian countries who are flocking to cities and increasingly leaving their home countries to escape the “family shame factor” and live more freely. Activists say including sexual orientation and gender identity in laws, policies and programs to prevent violence against women and children would reduce family vio…

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

By R. Drew Smith

…hate group and white supremacist group content has skyrocketed—even as the numbers of those groups have themselves noticeably increased. For example, the number of known hate groups is reported to have increased from roughly 600 in the year 2000 to 930 in 2014. Moreover, major television networks such as Fox TV have ushered hate content and white supremacist content into the media mainstream, featuring racialized rhetoric that ranges from disparag…

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

By Kaya Oakes

…t why such similarities exist. Many of the contributors are queer, which reflects the damage—or “nurtured insanity,” as Frank Schaeffer calls it in his foreword—fundamentalist Christianity has done to queer people just based on the number who have left. But it also demonstrates why Christian denominations that trot out their “welcoming and affirming” credentials may need to do more; they may want to spend some serious time listening to new members…

Francis Must Make Changes to Have a Real Effect

By Patricia Miller

…s remained fairly steady in recent decades is “the disproportionately high number of Catholics among immigrants to the U.S.,” which has masked “the large number of people who have left the Catholic church.” According to Pew, approximately one-third of those raised Catholic have left the church and 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics. If you were a business losing one-third of your customers, wouldn’t you want to make some changes? Sur…

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

By Rebecca Barrett-Fox

…studies” model we have used (i.e., Latino Studies, Asian Studies, etc.) influence how we move forward? SCHOLARS WITHOUT BORDERS Laurie Maffly-Kipp: At the most fundamental level, I’m interested in understanding why people do the things they do. And as a historian, I’m particularly interested in behaviors that don’t make obvious sense to me. Human beings are such puzzles and are motivated by so many different things. It takes a whole arsenal of ap…

The Anti-Trans Hate Machine’s Conspiracies Don’t Stop at the US Border

By Annika Brockschmidt

…to trans rights. She’s also a staunch anti-choice activist. A significant number of the other signatories are members of a right-wing German think tank called, innocently enough, “Netzwerk für Wissenschaftsfreiheit” (Network for the Freedom of Science). This Network peddles reactionary talking points about allegedly “left-wing” universities and “cancel culture” while its website treats “race science” as legitimate scholarly discourse. The anti-tr…

What’s So Troubling About Funding a Playground? How Trinity Lutheran Undermines the First Amendment

By Elizabeth Reiner Platt

…ecycled tires. Prospective grantees were evaluated and selected based on a number of factors, including poverty level of the surrounding area and their willingness to generate media exposure for Missouri. In 2012, Trinity Lutheran, a Missouri Synod congregation, applied for the grant to renovate the playground of a preschool owned and operated by the church. While it ranked highly, Trinity Lutheran was denied the grant because of a department poli…

Mike Johnson isn’t Just Your Average Christian Right Avatar — He’s Influenced by Fringe Movements Unfamiliar to Most Political Analysts

By Annika Brockschmidt

…as the form of Christianity from which he comes, are all steeped in the influence of this movement.” Posner also stresses the importance of the influence of dominionism and Christian Reconstructionism, over the question whether or not someone identifies with these labels: “The other important thing to remember is that Christian Reconstruction and dominionism (and remember Christian Reconstructionism teaches dominionism) are so ingrained in the Ch…

Updated: G-O-D Plays a Bit Part in First GOP Debate

By Daniel Schultz

…out positions that might be otherwise submerged, it’s helpful. Too bad it flopped. Ted Cruz responded with a theologically defensible position, citing his reading of scripture, as opposed to direct revelation. Then he went into a word salad about his father the preacher and “campaign conservatives” and religious liberty and eagles and the flag… America! Kasich responded that his father was a mailman. Walker, who is possibly the most interesting o…