Search for "evangelical left"

God Grows Up: Robert Wright’s Evolution of God

By Robert Wright

…the two goals, and I still second-guess myself over whole chapters that I left out or left in. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Give them pleasure? Piss them off? Well, I didn’t really plan it this way, but as the New York Times review of my book put it, “there is something here to annoy almost everyone.” Christians, Jews, and Muslims may not like my materialist account of their religious histories, and atheists won’t like the fact that I t…

The Convergence of Passover and Easter Can Leaven (or Unleaven) the Interfaith Family’s Holiday

By Samira K. Mehta

…feel that she was included in that “we.” For more than a decade, she felt left out at her in-laws’ seder table, and even at her own, though she had done half of the cooking. While the historical and theological (or social) tensions are fraught for some, many more experience Easter and Passover as a set of logistical challenges. Unlike Christmas and Hanukkah, Easter and Passover are scheduled, as it were, in ways that make them more likely to over…

Everything Was Better When We Had God In Our Schools

By Hollis Phelps

…December 22, 1868, Chattanooga, Tennessee. A boy who refused to be whipped left school, and returned with his brother and a friend the next day to seek revenge on his teacher. Not finding the teacher at the school, they continued to his house, where a gun battle rang out, leaving three dead. Only the brother survived. • March 9, 1873, Salisbury, Maryland. After school as Miss Shockley was walking with four small children, she was approached by a M…

How A Cat Saved My Life

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…a girl and prefer plaid to pleats and baseball to beauty pageants, you get left out. You get called names. You get marginalized, excluded, harassed, and hounded. In short, you get bullied—and you can’t think of a way out except the ultimate way out. As I sat in the road that night, I spotted a cat over near the steps to my home church. Contrary to lesbian lore I was not a cat fan at this stage in my life. I much preferred dogs and didn’t learn to…

Progressive & Religious

By Robert P. Jones

…values from the right and a radical divorce of faith from politics on the left. But this new group of religious leaders is reenvisioning religion in public life and blazing a trail that goes beyond partisan politics to work for a more just and inclusive society. Is there anything you had to leave out? The toughest things I left out of the book were so many of the exceptionally rich interviews I conducted with nearly 100 religious leaders over…

Mormon Leader Affirms Doctrine on Marriage; and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…in an interview with EurasiaNet.org. At The Guardian, Samad Ismayilov, who left Aerbaijan in 2014, writes about recent arrests and mistreatment. The whole Azerbaijani LGBTQ community is now living in fear. Some have left the country – and they don’t know how long it will be before they can go home. Without international support to put pressure on Azerbaijan’s government to stop this vile treatment, all we can do is help those who feel unsafe to le…

When I Have Fears The Middle East May Cease To Be

By Haroon Moghul

…s hard not to be mocked by life’s simple contingencies. Had my parents not left, would I have had the opportunities I do now? And what about those who are in Pakistan, who must face the ongoing tragedy of a country that never figured itself out, a country that still does not know how to answer this devastating question: Is a Pakistani an Indian? The circumstances of Pakistan’s birth were far more uncomfortable than most. It was traumatic, violent,…

Jesus in 3D: The Shroud of Turin Meets the 21st Century

By Peter Manseau

…he possibility that the Shroud is what believers claim has apparently been left on the cutting-room floor), I hoped to make the case that the most interesting question to ask of them has little to do with authenticity: Why should physical objects hold such enduring spiritual fascination? In general, it is not the fact of relics that matter, but the stories behind them. The Missing Years Like any good true-crime story, the mystery of the Shroud sta…

Rejecting Blood Sacrifice Theology, Again

By Peter Laarman

…via Alison. It’s as though we are getting a parallax view, through a post-evangelical lens, of matters viewed quite clearly by liberal scholars and openly progressive Christian believers in the West for a very long time now. And also of matters viewed clearly, and quite differently, for two millennia by Christianity’s Eastern Orthodox tradition, which never had the bloody cross as its central focus. The Eastern tradition shows us Christ Pantokrat…

Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua Dies: Potential Witness in Philly Sex Abuse Trial

By Anthea Butler

…ommunity and the finances of one of the most faithful and persevering Catholic communities in the United States. I actually feel some compassion for Philadelphia Archbishop Chaput, who has been left with a cesspool to clean up. I don’t agree with the Archbishop on many issues, but I wish him the best in cleaning up the mess his predecessors left behind….