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A collage of a Bible, Valdimir Putin, and the Kremlin and an outline of Russia

Putin’s ‘Year of the Family’ Declaration Blends Russian Nationalism with the Far-Right Rhetoric of the Global Pro-Family Movement

By Irina Smolevskaya

…percent of the total Russian population in 2021—according to the official numbers. When read against the dwindling numbers of some of Russia’s largest ethnic minority groups, such as Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Avars, Armenians, and Ukrainians, this data suggests that many Russian citizens do not feel safe enough to disclose their ethnic identity in the current political climate defined by the Russification of the nation. See Robert Coalson, “Russ…

Catholic Voters No Longer Beholden to Bishops and Abortion

By Mary E. Hunt

…has grown flaccid since, in large part due to the priest pedophilia and episcopal cover-up scandals. In the late 1980s, Joseph Cardinal Bernard in Chicago championed the so-called Consistent Ethic of Life or “seamless garment” approach to the question of abortion. In this view, abortion, while important, is joined by moral concerns about war, capital punishment, euthanasia, economic justice, racism, and the like. There is dispute among adherents a…

‘Murder Among the Mormons,’ Latest True Crime Doc From Netflix, Highlights Issues of Faith, Skepticism, and Authenticity

By Benjamin E. Park

…community, the Hofmann forgeries and bombings had longer legacies that transcend what they’ll see on the screen. The crisis also raises questions concerning spiritual belief, religious scholarship, and faithful belonging in a modern era. Bolder and bolder forgeries The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints celebrated its sesquicentennial in 1980, the year of Mark Hofmann’s first forgery. After spending much of its first century as a cultural…

Growing Up Cult: A Memoir of Life with Sri Chinmoy

By Brittany Shoot

…the memoir had been scheduled to be released in April 2009. Some current disciples seem to have organized efforts to discredit your story. How have you handled their reactions? I understand their reaction because I used to feel like them. Anyone whom we believed was out to present a view of the guru that posited him as anything other than as a perfect being and living saint—we were outraged. Because I know their perspective, I am not surprised by…

The Suppression of Sin in Evangelical Abolitionism: The Wilberforce Problem

By Jonathan D. Fitzgerald

…part, due to attention to the issue from the evangelical media machine. A number of books have been published by Christian presses in recent years with titles like God in the Brothel: An Undercover Journey into Sex Trafficking and Rescue, The Slave Across the Street: A True Story of How an American Teen Survived the World of Human Trafficking, and Half the Church: Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women. The latter, written by Carolyn Custis Ja…

Post-Election, “Is The Black Church Dead?” Redux

By Anthea Butler

…and a growing number of conservative African-American candidates. A record number of black Republicans ran in this midterm election (some had already lost their primaries), and two are heading to Congress. Tim Scott will be the first African-American Republican to represent South Carolina in Congress since Reconstruction. (He beat out Strom Thurmond’s son in the primaries.) Iraq war veteran Allen West will be headed to Congress from Florida, despi…

The Quixotic Task of Debunking David Barton

By Paul Harvey

…ates go back a long way. When I was in college at a Baptist denominational school in Oklahoma, the biology professor, a man about as committed to the Baptist intellectual tradition as one could imagine, refused all offers to stage “debates” with creationists who wanted to come to campus for a big showdown. There’s no point in fighting with scientific frauds, he once told me, because by appearing on the stage with them, it simply gives the appearan…

Prisoners In the Hands of an Angry God: A Conversation About Religion and Reform

By Andrew Aghapour and Stephanie Gaskill

…t want to know the exact reasons people make the decisions they do? Social scientists seem particularly keen to identify religion as a source for political opinions, I think for a number of reasons. First, many assume that religious beliefs are the most fundamental, unchangeable, deeply held beliefs that an individual holds. The assumption is that since you can’t change them, religious beliefs constitute a stable starting point from which you can…

Warships, Animals, Pubs Eligible For Blessings From Church of England, But Not Same-Sex Couples; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…n condemned by various religious bodies, such as the Association of Muslim Scholars of Lebanon, describing it as “a shock to Lebanese society”. “In the Arab world, even when the law is secular, it is still a reflection of the collective religious beliefs and values of a people. For this reason, I do genuinely believe that to engage the religious establishment in all the countries of the Arab world is crucial for affecting lasting and sustainable s…

What do the January 6 Commission, Covid Deaths and Gun Massacres All Have in Common? God’s Chosen

By John Stoehr

…like it implicitly—in that they have decided, as a political party over a number of years, that only Republicans can rule legitimately. The country is politically polarized, because the Republicans now insist on a polarized worldview in which the Republicans are good, because they are good and the Democrats are bad, because they are bad. Calls to “do the right thing,” like establishing a truth commission, cannot therefore be seen as merely “doing…