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

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…sations where they may make themselves vulnerable. Could there be a middle way for people to come together on the issue of homosexuality? How can you come forward in vulnerability when you feel either victimized or hurt? I think we all need thicker skins and I think we all need more grace. Maybe I’m an idealist when I imagine a church where we can—not necessarily agree because I don’t know that we’ll ever entirely agree on these issues—but at le…

Marriage is for Everybody, Says Former Anti-Gay Evangelical

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…grappled with recognizing that this is not something you could choose your way out of. There’s always this sense of, “If you really tried hard, or prayed hard enough, you could come around.” Again, my gay friends would say, “Why on earth would I choose something like this? Who needs all this trouble?” I think it’s the willingness of gay and lesbian people in sharing their stories that finally got it through my thick head that this isn’t an optiona…

White Nationalist Ideology Shines Through at Elite MAGA Conference: Inside NatCon Part II

By Ben Lorber

…rence here is ethnicity—or race, if you will… races differ in all sorts of ways, and probably the most important way is in IQ.” In 2013, Richwine lost his research position at the Heritage Foundation when a Washington Post investigation revealed that his racist doctoral dissertation, “IQ and Immigration Policy,” had made assertions like “the average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native populati…

I’m Not Here to Fix Evangelicals, But to Show Them Who They Are: An Interview With the Author of ‘White Evangelical Racism’

By Chrissy Stroop

…nd sexist pronouncements and laws they often back and promulgate. From the ways in which white women were put on a pedestal by white men in the Reconstruction and Redemption era, to the lifting up of the “family” as a way to disparage Black families as not being “moral” if there wasn’t a two-parent household, evangelical moral issues about sex, family and money have never been applied stringently to themselves or their leadership the same way they…

Authoritarian Populism Vs Human Rights, The Campaign Against ‘Gender Ideology’ and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…onally and a very efficient way to touch a lot of countries in a concerted way and in an aggressive way is the United Nations.” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry issued a formal apology for discrimination against LGBT employees during the “Lavender Scare,” which included decades of purges of gay men and lesbians working at the State Department and other federal government agencies. The anti-choice and anti-LGBT LifeSiteNews has run a two-part ser…

How Robert Bellah (1927-2013) Changed the Study of Religion

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…fied its immediate material needs and can imagine, or act out, alternative ways of being. My guess is that this understanding of religion will eventually have a profound effect on the way that religious scholars conceive of their subject matter, and how to go about studying it in its physical as well as literary expressions. Finally, Bellah’s last book has made a lasting contribution to our understanding of religion as a global phenomenon. As I sa…

Is It the Job of Religion Journalists to Define “Religion”?

By Ann Taves

…any set of norms, practices, and beliefs that establishes a comprehensive way of life that is held out as the right or best way of life for those who adhere to it.” The key term is “comprehensive.” CrossFit, football, Star Trek, and dieting fads are insufficiently comprehensive to count as religion. Linker, recognizing that his definition would encompass philosophy, distinguishes between them based on the source of their knowledge regarding the b…

Why “Family Values” Defined Conservative Christianity (and Why “Religious Liberty” Has Replaced it)

By Eric C. Miller

…y values: enough Americans (and enough evangelicals) have decided that the way the Christian Right defined them in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s is too narrow. The pro-family movement is fragmenting. Family values aren’t going away as long as families exist. What’s at stake is how we conceive of families and their values. The cover of my book depicts a scene at the dinner table of a coal miner in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1971. It’s a visual encapsu…

Former Employees: Racism & Abuse in Leading Religious Right Org.

By Sarah Posner

…the oldest, largest, and most radical religious right groups, and it has always played a major role in the right wing movement’s efforts to denigrate gay Americans and to convince conservative Christians that liberals are out to destroy religious liberty and silence people of faith,” said Michael Keegan, president of People For the American Way. “The AFA has also played an active role in driving the national right-wing agenda—at the so called Valu…

The Queen is Coming: Preparing for Ramadan

By Amina Wadud

…e to Islam. What is more, I do not pretend to share them in some universal way, only in the way in which I am experiencing them, and only this year. This year is special for me because after almost 40 years of the practice of Islam, by choice, I will embark on the “journey of a lifetime”: the pilgrimage to Makkah for the first time. While I will make this pilgrimage in fulfillment of the ritual requirement of Islam, I have already been warned. My…