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Global Religious Right Asks ‘How Far Can We Get?’; And More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…egnancy did not put the woman’s life at risk. A woman could receive five to 10 years in prison, while a doctor could be sentenced to six to 12 years—up to 25 years if a woman dies as a result of an abortion. The bill also includes a restriction on public and private educational institutions from promoting “gender ideology” and a provision that “no person may be prosecuted” for not accepting “sexual diversity.” Deputy Anibal Rojas Espino, who intro…

Like Azusa Street Baptized into Bureaucracy: Mexico’s Flourishing LLDM Church Loses its Apostle

By Michael Schulson

…ath a great metal bible. Across the street is the main temple, built in the 1980s and early 1990s, much of it with volunteer labor. The building is white, and its sloping surface, like a 26 story-tall circus tent, is paneled. The effect, whether intended or not, is of stairs marching up to heaven. Alternately, the building resembles the arched back of some great albino reptile, or a pangolin on its hind legs trying to lick the sky. Inside, it’s a…

The Incredible Shrinking Catholic Church

By Paul Gorrell

…le from its ranks and fights against their rights, ignores the diminishing number of priests and the effects of this shortage on Church communities, and calls on Catholics to form the “perfect society” resembling the ecclesiology of Opus Dei. It is no surprise that Pope Benedict comes from a country—Germany—where the percentage of Church members attending Sunday mass is one of the lowest in the world. Strict adherence to orthodoxy will not be popu…

Are We Entering the End Times for Mainline Seminaries?

By Elesha Coffman

…nce existed mainly to train full-time pastors faced reductions in both the number of churches that could support such positions and the number of people eager to take the more challenging, but lower paying, church jobs that remained. Some seminaries shifted their missions to serve the academy or society more broadly, while others trained more part-time, second-career and lay pastors. These shifts were less abrupt than decisions to close or merge a…

Pride Month & Prejudice; ‘Worrisome Time’ For LGBT People; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ionalists A crowd estimated by organizers at 50,000 people and by police at 13,000 marched in Warsaw’s 17th annual Equality Parade on June 3, which DW notes come at a time when the conservative government is opposing civil unions for same-sex couples: Poland’s constitution is one of seven in the EU to ban gay marriage and the country is one of six in the 28-member bloc not to allow same-sex civil unions. The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party in P…

Resurrection of ‘Comstock Laws’ Would Threaten Access to Abortifacients — But Even That Fear Misses Bigger Picture

By Gillian Frank

…e Supreme Court decided Griswold v Connecticut in 1965, Clarence Thomas was 16 years old and Samuel Alito was 15. Both men were in their twenties when the court issued Roe v Wade, Doe v Bolton, Eisenstadt v Baird, and Miller v California. Which is to say, Justices Thomas and Alito came of age as the Supreme Court, through decisions on contraception, abortion, and obscenity, liberalized a restrictive sexual order by mooting federal and state “Comst…

The Story Behind the Catholic Church’s Stunning Contraception Reversal

By Patricia Miller

…iage, further hardened its insistence on the procreative purpose of sex. By 1400, Augustine’s doctrine on contraception was the rule within the church. Despite its longevity, Cahill wasn’t the only Catholic woman questioning the teaching on birth control. In 1964, another budding theologian named Rosemary Radford Ruether published an article entitled “A Catholic Mother Tells: Why I Believe in Birth Control” in the Saturday Evening Post, bringing t…

Hobby Lobby: Key to a More Liberal and Less Religious America?

By Rebecca Sager

…te hearts and minds, and moving people out of the pews across America. The number of nones (people with no religious preference) is on the rise, with over 20% of all Americans claiming this status, and many point to the increased politicization of religion as the cause. This trend of legal victories will, in the long run, very likely create a more secular America. Recent data indicate that this process is already clearly under way. A poll just rel…

Review: Is the Religious Right Dying?

By Laura R. Olson

…e past quarter century has been its laser-like focus on a relatively small number of interrelated issues. The religious left would need to define its agenda priorities clearly and precisely in order to earn concrete policy victories. Nor am I convinced that we should write an obituary for the religious right. As Dionne notes in Souled Out, “The end of the religious right does not signal a decline in evangelical Christianity” (p. 4). Far from it: e…

In the Papal Pocket: Benedict XVI and the Press

By Mary E. Hunt

…d a nation-state. The Vatican City State has been a sovereign country since 1929; it has about 1000 inhabitants governed by the Pope, and, in his absence, by the College of Cardinals; all of whom are chosen by him. In the opinion of many people it is as secretive, punitive, and dismissive of human rights as some dictatorships. These are serious issues that warrant full discussion, not glossing over as if the correct liturgical colors and Gregorian…