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Trump the Totem: Like Other Fascist Leaders, Trump has Turned from Man to Symbol — And That’s the Danger

By Robert P. Jones

…SBC’s flagship seminary: “Say what you will about Donald Trump and his sex scandals, he doesn’t confuse male and female.” Also, see “From Fox News to the Far(ther) Right — Calls for Violence and Retribution Follow Trump Verdict“] Sociologists have used the term “totem” to describe the way symbols come to have a powerful unifying effect among groups. This week, it struck me that this passage in Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Lif…

Right Wingers Say “Gay” is Out, But Try Putting “Unnatural Vice” On a Bumper Sticker

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…eny minority of people may take away their right to tell gays and lesbians that God will send them to hell for all eternity — out of love, mind you. But, then again, anti-gay Evangelicals have a right to be afraid. After all, researchers say the actual number of Evangelicals may well be “as small as 7 percent of the total adult population.” Which means Evangelicals know just how effective a small number of people can be at taking away the rights o…

Pope Francis Has Painted Himself into a Corner on Women Deacons

By Mary E. Hunt

…h the evidence and concluded that it’s a good bet that women were deacons. Scriptural evidence in Romans 16:1 and I Timothy 3:11 has been worked over thoroughly. Phoebe was not a Girl Scout but a deacon. Consensus is elusive, but church laws have been made on flimsier data. Further study is unlikely to yield new information, simply more opinions about history. As investment brokers say, past performance is no guarantee of future results. So it is…

Are You Rapture Ready?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…I suppose I’m already behind in my preparations. I count myself among the scoffers of second coming date-setting since Jesus himself said we won’t know the date or the time of his return. Evans is prepared with his answer to me and others who laugh off their efforts: “Sadly, only eight people survived the flood in Noah’s time,” he said. “The number of people that are going to be saved is going to be very small.” All this rapture talk reminds me o…

Conservative Hardliners at Synod Prompt Question: “What Are We Doing Here?”

By Patricia Miller

…m the first small group discussions held this week indicate that a sizable number of bishops believe that the preparatory document is all doom-and-gloom and doesn’t do enough to celebrate the sizable number of Catholics who are successfully leading a traditional Catholic family life, reports John Allen: The synod’s final report ‘should begin with hope rather than failures, because a great many people already do successfully live the Gospel’s good…

Was Ghana Anti-Gay Scare Just Politics?

By Warren Throckmorton

…ed “to get rid of these people in the society.” Some observers believe the number of sexual minorities may have been inflated in order to whip up opposition to homosexuality which could advance the standing of conservative politicians. Graham Knight, a British blogger living in Ghana, recently wrote that the claim of 8,000 sexual minorities has little support in fact. Knight concluded, in a blog post titled Did Ghana register 8000 homosexuals? The…

As New Poll Finds “Increased Xenophobic Streak,” Republicans Heighten Anti-Muslim Rhetoric

By Sarah Posner

…refugee-terrorist connection. The United States has resettled only a small number of Syrian refugees, but already governors are targeting the additional 10,000 the Obama administration aims to resettle here. More than a dozen Republican governors have stated their intention to refuse to resettle Syrian refugees in their states, including in Mississippi, Alabama, Michigan, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and…

Why We Won’t Let Jonestown (Or 9/11 or Sandy Hook) Die

By Kelsey Osgood

…all the previous attempts at memorialization fail? Of course, there are misconceptions about what actually occurred that day—the most egregious being that all the victims voluntarily drank the poison—but an attempt to separate fact from myth hardly seems like a movement that will gain much traction at this late date when we have so much else to deal with. As Jim Jones Jr., the adopted son of Jim and Marceline Jones, tells Ms. Fondakowski, “Just p…

The Religious Case Against Religious Discrimination in Cakeshop Case

By Patrick Hornbeck

…tice and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission statistics on religious discrimination by employers, showing that such incidents tend to involve Muslims and Jews in significant numbers. These, of course, are not the only kinds of arguments that religious believers are making in Masterpiece Cakeshop. Religious groups opposed to same-sex marriage, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Af…

A Secret History of Satan

By W. Scott Poole

…I think will be interested and challenged by the book. For example, I am fascinated by the growing number of pop culture addicts who want to examine how their interest in fantasy, science fiction, horror, and the fantastic in general connects to theology, popular religion, and the sacred more generally. There is a real and growing audience out there for this approach as evidenced by Gary Laderman’s book Sacred Matters, Joseph Laycock’s very intere…