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Clergy May Soon Find Taxes Soaring As Result of an Under-the-Radar Ruling

By Patrick Hornbeck

…n unfortunate truth that applies to many devoted and talented employees in service professions,” Crabb wrote. “However, the manner in which Congress alleviated a financial burden on a group of religious persons was neither required by the free exercise clause nor prohibited by the establishment clause.” She suggested that there are a variety of ways in which Congress could constitutionally support ministers’ housing needs: by creating an exemption…

A Catholic House Divided Over Reproductive Health Care: Bishops Launch a New Campaign

By Frances Kissling

…ows full well that opposition to providing contraceptive and sterilization services is not the same as insuring those services, has joined the bishops in this fight. More importantly, it remains to be seen whether the Obama administration will understand that it is quite possible that many Catholic hospitals would have no moral problem covering their employees for contraceptive services should the administration stand firm. Some may in fact ferven…

Why I Will Not See The Help: A Rant

By Rosetta E. Ross

…that all honest work has dignity. However, the reality is that persons in service work, especially service work in US homes, generally are grossly undercompensated. This undercompensation often occurs because their social or legal status makes them easy targets for exploitation. There is honor and dignity in their work to support themselves and their families, but the structure that allows their undercompensation dishonors such persons, marking t…

After Embracing Female Bishop, Pope Spins Again on Women’s Ordination

By Kaya Oakes

…sala and primate of the Church of Sweden, read the gospel at an ecumenical service to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Pope Francis embraced Jackelen at the passing of the peace. This morning, when he boarded a plane back to Rome, Kristina Kappelin of Swedish TV asked the pope if the Catholic ban on female priests was “forever.” “On the ordination of women in the Catholic church,” the pope replied, “the last word is clear.” Referring…

Why the King Hearings Should Matter to Mormons

By Joanna Brooks

…e Smoot trials and the King hearings as well. Kathleen Flake, professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University and author of The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle, writes that unlike the King hearings: The Smoot hearings had some basis in fact: the LDS Church was breaking the law against polygamy. The merits of that law, of course, are questionable, but there’s no question th…

LGBTQ Methodists on Whether the United Methodist Church Will Ever Affirm LGBTQ People

By Tris Mamone

…he would be allowed to serve as a liturgist for the church’s second Sunday service. Still, McWilliams has hope for the UMC’s future. “There are studies that have shown that American youth are 70 percent pro-LGBT,” she tells RD, “and I should imagine the ratio is similar in the church. Women’s acceptance to Annual Conferences and to Ordination both took 20 to 30 years, as the older, more conservative generation passed on the mantle to the younger p…

The Democrats, The Gays, And The Evangelicals

By Sarah Posner

…he White House cares about, One News Now, the (notoriously slanted) “news” service of the American Family Association reported just before the election that White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Director Joshua DuBois reached out to David Jeremiah, a California megachurch pastor who declared in an AFA news story that Obama “is a dangerous person” because he’s moving the country toward “socialism.” The pair reportedly agre…

Norwegian Catholic Church May Stop Civil Marriages; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…tizens.” Australia: Australian Christian Lobby Partners With Anti-Equality American Evangelicals Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison, reported the Sydney Morning Herald on April 16, was scheduled to “share a stage at the Australian Christian Lobby’s annual conference with a radio host who compared the advancement of gay rights to the rise of Nazism in pre-war Germany.” The event that weekend featured American religious right figures Eric Metaxas and…

International reax to US Marriage Ruling; Official violence at Turkey’s Pride; Marriage Advances in Mexico Over Church Objections; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…: The Russian Orthodox Church has appealed to all Russian advocates of the American model of governance, asking them to think twice about the consequences of the United States’ decision to legalize same-sex “marriages”. “The people who are into ‘democracy the American way’ and trying to reconcile it with traditional values need to think hard after this decision,” the head of the Synodal Department for Church and Society Relations Archpriest Vsevol…

As Hobby Lobby Heads to SCOTUS, Let’s Ditch Kosher Butcher Analogies

By Sarah Posner

…r (1985), another unanimous decision – a religious exemption would require customers, employees, or competitors to bear a heavy cost in the service of another’s religion, something the Court has understandably been loath to sanction. That said, though, it’s hard to imagine (a) the government requiring kosher butchers to sell pork, except in the conservative imagination where the government persecutes religious believers and (b) in any case, why th…