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5 Key Moments From the Year of the ‘Exvangelicals’

By Chrissy Stroop

…g with it, with Michelle Panchuk producing an important thread on why the “best practices” document released by the summit organizers doesn’t represent a serious understanding of best practices, and will thus fail to prevent abuse. 2018 is the year that exvangelicals broke through and began to change the national discussion of evangelicalism in a serious and sustained way. Look for more snarky and serious hashtags, Urban Dictionary definitions, of…

The Pastoral is the Political: Let’s Stop Hyde-ing

By Harry F. Knox

…decisions about pregnancy. God trusts and empowers each of us to make the best decisions that are best for our families and ourselves. The law would remove federal, state and local legislators’ ability to interfere with this by preventing them from outlawing abortion coverage through private insurance. Removing the Hyde amendment and passing the EACH Woman Act are critical for advancing justice and liberty in America. We know, too, that there wil…

In Praise of Mary Magdalene

By Garret Keizer

…f God is dead, Mary will see to the corpse. When The God Delusion tops the best seller list, she’s the one dusting off the Torah scrolls in the discount bin. If there is a path beyond belief and beyond atheism—which, after all, is but another form of belief, and lately a rather fundamentalist form to boot—Mary Magdalene walks that path. I have met others walking it with her, carrying their disillusionment like a cross. And still they show up, in p…

Mass Bible-Based Sexual Dysfunction as Root of Culture Wars? Frank Schaeffer Breaks It Down

By Frank Schaeffer

…ke-home message for readers? To be true to what I hope is the heart of the best of the universal religious message, I want to say that redemption through selflessness, hope, and love necessitates a new and fearless repudiation of the parts of holy books and traditions—be they Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or other—that bring us messages of hate, exclusion, racism, ignorance, misogyny, homophobia, tribalism, and fear. To find any spiritual truth withi…

The Mystic in the Rye: JD Salinger’s Religious Fiction

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…at you must be longing to hear now. That is, if as I know you do, you love best in this world those little beings of pure spirit with a natural temperature of 125, then it naturally follows that the creature you love next best is the person—the God-knower or God-hater (almost never apparently anything in between), the saint or profligate, moralist or complete immoralist—who can write a poem that is a poem. Among human beings, he’s the curlew sandp…

Finding Love—and Dogma—in Unexpected Places: Jeff Chu’s Gay Christian Odyssey

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…rable, messy selves? The church is where you dress up and wear your Sunday best. That sometimes precludes being real. Did you find any of your expectations easily confirmed? What surprised me the least is how dogmatic people can be on all points of the theological spectrum. It was disappointing, but it wasn’t surprising, to hear Fred Phelps be dogmatic. It was disappointing but not surprising to hear people in the Metropolitan Community Church be…

Vatican Council on Women Would Be Funny Were it Not So Insulting

By Mary E. Hunt

…nation, saying statistically women do not want it. I would love to see the numbers. Since when did the Vatican worry about public opinion? Until and unless this very obvious example of Catholic women’s inferiority and marginalization is resolved, the organization is on thin ice to claim moral authority on much of anything. On the substance of religion, the best these writers offer is a series of polite questions. By now several generations of Cath…

FRC’s Perkins Selling Straight Hot Sex

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…g to sell the younger generation on the intrinsic value of marriage as the best way to raise children, they’ve decided to back up a few steps and instead pitch the great baby-making sex that straight married couples apparently have. “Those who worship God weekly have the best sex,” asserted Patrick F. Fagan, Senior Fellow and Director of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute (MARRI) at the Family Research Council. Interestingly, however, th…

How a Powerful ‘Ex-Gay’ Pastor is Chasing the Latino Vote

By Katherine Stewart

…ersuade their congregations to vote their “biblical” values. A substantial number of Church United gatherings are conducted in the Spanish language, and the organization has spawned at least one affiliate, Alianza de Pastores Unidos de San Diego, whose members minister to largely Spanish-speaking audiences. It wasn’t always this way, of course, and it isn’t going to change overnight. Many of the southern white evangelical groups that remain entren…

A Reforming Tradition Struggles With Change

By Brent Hege

…onal ministers, associates in ministry, and deaconesses, and currently the number of women and men preparing for ministry in ELCA seminaries is roughly equal (Susan Candea, “Wisdom Has Blessed Us”). While there are certainly some in the ELCA who continue to oppose women’s ordination, those numbers are small and grow smaller with each passing year. The same, I suspect, will be the case for the issue of gay and lesbian ordination forty years from no…