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The American Media’s Longterm Ambivalence About the Papacy

By Peter Manseau

…zines, but today much of the reading public seems more interested in iconoclasm. When the new pope is soon shown within Time’s familiar red frame he will likely appear in full and flattering light, but only briefly. Is it any wonder that the last newsweekly standing would gravitate toward stories of once-unquestioned authority undermined and reduced to a shadow of its former significance? This is, after all, a story it knows quite well. *This ess…

This Year in Satanism

By Joseph Laycock

…be desecrated during the performance. The black mass was cancelled at the last minute as 1500 protesting Catholics held a Eucharistic procession down Massachusetts Avenue. Some observers opined that this cancellation represented a defeat for the values of religious tolerance and pluralism that Harvard has traditionally espoused. JUNE In June, Greaves did a number of interviews taking aim at Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and his efforts to ban gay…

More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

By John Wigger

…y, buying vacation homes, expensive cars and clothes, and traveling first class with an entourage. Then it all came crashing down. In March 1987 Bakker resigned in disgrace after his 1980 sexual encounter with Jessica Hahn in a Florida hotel room became public. Stories emerged about gay relationships and visits to prostitutes. By the end of the year, PTL was in bankruptcy, headed for liquidation. In 1989 Bakker was convicted of wire and mail fraud…

What Do ‘The Christians’ Believe? Easter Reflections from a Non-Christian

By Gary Laderman

…at erased difference and imposed uniformity for the purposes of power and classification. As Easter approaches and I read through the news, absorbing the cultural trends of the day, a lingering, increasingly vexing question comes to mind: what do “the Christians” believe? Over the span of a 24-hour news cycle, one hears about Christians in action with all sorts of spoken and unspoken moral commitments and sacred investments, but at the end of the…

Holy Father, You’re Not Helping: The Problem with the Pope’s Plan to Consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

By Katherine Kelaidis

…hief among them contention over the pope’s claim to universal authority. A number of violent incidents over two hundred years, from both sides of Christianity’s two halves, helped solidify the separation. These included the Byzantine massacre of Catholics living in Constantinople in 1182, the sacking of Thessaloniki by Catholics in 1185, and their pillage of Constantinople in 1204. Finally, the establishment of Rome-allied episcopacies in traditio…

Glenn Beck’s Salvation Army

By Peter Montgomery

…faith through a prism of American nationalism? Not to mention the growing number of Americans without any religious commitment? Beck tells us, “you must fall to your knees and you must reconnect with God. He is not asking you. He is commanding us as a people to get behind Him. He will right the wrongs. We will have to pay a price because we lived outside of His laws. We will have to pay a price, but every day we don’t get behind Him, the price ge…

Orthodox Jews Begin to Reckon with Sexual Abuse

By Paul Berger

…he secular authorities), chilul hashem (the desecration of God’s name) and lashon hara (spreading gossip) are invoked to coerce people into keeping quiet. Going to a secular court without a rabbi’s permission can be interpreted as violating Jewish law. Simply speaking out can have terrible consequences. Last year, Yehoshua Finkelstein, a 20-year-old abuse victim from the Orthodox enclave of Lakewood, New Jersey, died of an overdose in an apparent…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…s to block all access to Twitter in the country because of objections to “blasphemous content.” The IHEU reports being contacted by an increasing number of secularist groups organizing on Facebook, including groups in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, and Sudan. In all of this, the United States is an anomaly since it rejects even laws against religious hate speech, which were f…

My Business, Myself: Piercing the Corporate Veil

By Howard M. Friedman

…ed by businesses like Annex challenge the ACA’s contraception mandate on a number of grounds. The most significant challenge invokes the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, claiming that the insurance coverage mandate imposes a substantial burden on the free exercise of religion. Annex Medical lost its claim because the court concluded that the mandate does not impose a substantial burden on religious exercise and in the widely-publicized H…

Dear White Evangelicals: A Black Square Ain’t Gonna Cut It

By Jhas Williams

…and encourage the idea that the body of Christ is segregated by race and class. To people of color who have spent centuries being shunned or diminished by white evangelicals, anything less than acknowledgment, and changed behavior, specifically from Bible-toting white men who’ve manipulated scriptural teachings in order to keep Black people in both literal and proverbial chains, will be as fake as it is antagonistic. The acknowledgment that Black…