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Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…use, are deeply personal components of social self-identity. As such, they participate in the cultural and spiritual traditions of naming. But the addition of the Humanist designation to the list of approved faith codes has concrete implications as well. It gives Humanist service members access to Army Chaplaincy services, including spiritual counseling and gathering spaces for Humanist groups. It also means that the numbers and distribution of Hu…

Naked Jihad

By Kate Blanchard

…ke.) In the end, small-f feminism is as diverse as the women (and men) who participate in it. If Tunisians and Ukrainians want to get naked in order to make a statement, more power to them. And if Pakistani or Parisian women want to tell these women off, so be it. Each of them will reap consequences, both predictable and unpredictable. None of us can control the effect our words, actions, and images have on other people, so we do the only thing we…

American Sin: Why Pope Francis’ Mercy is Not Our Mercy

By Kaya Oakes

…These can be awkward and painful to witness, but they offer some sense of participatory release. We are no longer forgiven by God, but by one another. The majority of Americans do not get their ideas about mercy from churches. They get it from television and films. And in our entertainment, mercy is not something given by God, but given from one person to another. In the new Star Wars film, Finn’s merciful act toward the imprisoned Poe ends up li…

The Progress of Christ in Commercial America: A Review of Chris Lehmann’s The Money Cult

By Peter Laarman

…or example that Social Darwinism’s overall impact in the late 19th century pales in comparison to the runaway impact of Russell Conway’s “acres of diamonds” preaching. He demonstrates in a similar way how the postwar flowering of a potent culture of anti-union conservatism among Southern California’s evangelical and parachurch movements was entirely self-created and not simply the result of solicitation or manipulation by that era’s business leade…

‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon, and 1/6

By Catherine Wessinger

…been anticipating a revolution against the federal government for decades. Participants’ aim is to set up a collective salvation on earth for white people who regard themselves as the true “natives” of the land that is now the United States. In the 1990s, participants in this white supremacist movement that had no name, which I have termed the Euro-American Nativist Millennial Movement, were waiting and preparing to carry out a “Second American Re…

Religion and Other Animals

By Paul Waldau

…ntly. At the same time, more households in the United States today have companion animals than have children. Polls consistently indicate that an astonishing number of people—in some cases more than ninety-nine percent—hold their dog or cat to be a “family member.” Communities of faith are among the institutions that are most responsive to the complex connections between humans and other animals. One increasingly finds that contemporary religious…

No Conspiracy Theories Needed: Abortion Foes Cry Racism

By Kathryn Joyce

…Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proposed inclusion of contraception in the stimulus package, in part by denouncing her as a bigot and a racist who wanted “to reduce the number of children [born] to the nation’s poorest economic groups, which tend to be persons of color and other minorities.” The Pro-Life Action League made a similar criticism this week against the Guttmacher Institute, claiming that the Institute’s call for publicly-funded birth control “t…

Evangelical Pastor Argues for Full LGBT Inclusion: “I Think It’s Inevitable”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…gely positive, but I think that’s because of the subtitle: “An evangelical pastor’s path to embracing people who are gay, lesbian and transgender into the company of Jesus,” signals where it’s going. The people who are reading it then, are fairly open minded on the question or understand it’s an issue that needs to be wrestled with, whereas the entrenched conservatives are just dismissing it. Within Vineyard, our new leadership team has made it cl…

Islamic Intellectual Leadership at a Crossroads

By Amina Wadud

…you made it into the book. I told him I do not need the recognition of the particular parties involved, including the neo-Orientalist scholar who edited it, to affirm my contributions to Islam (or to my faith, for both are part of my devotion to Allah). They do have a substantial number of women included, so I would not complain on that count. But, here’s the thing: there are no women under the category of Muslim intellectuals. Apparently women do…

Lessons from the Defeat of the Oklahoma Personhood Bill

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ve mentioned before in my coverage of SB-1433, I live in Oklahoma and have participated, in a volunteer capacity, in efforts to keep SB-1433 from becoming law.] Archbishop Coakley of Oklahoma wrote this letter to all the priests in his diocese urging them to advocate for SB-1433 at Mass on the Sunday before the anticipated floor fight. Well, there was a fight, but SB-1433 was never heard, and now the deadline has expired. In the aftermath, it seem…