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Tainted Love: The Cost of Sojourners’ Refusal to Take Sides on LGBT Issues

By Jamie L. Manson

…iately forthcoming about our relationship if someone talks to us after the service. Regardless of what good work we do for the church, our efforts will be seen by many church people as tainted because of our loving, committed relationship. The congregants in my partner’s home church are extremely proud of the work that she is doing with the poor in New York City. However, if they knew she was in a relationship with a woman, they would cease to ta…

Mormon “Martin Luther” Causes Stir by Uploading LDS Church Handbook of Instructions to Internet

By Joanna Brooks

…of status in the community. (In Mormonism, the demands of lay ministerial service do convey certain privileges as well.) So imagine how LDS web crawlers felt last week when we found ourselves staring at a blog published by a self-described Mormon “Martin Luther” who had scanned the entire CHI into two giant PDF files and put them on the internet. For just anyone. For free. A few hours later, a fully-searchable edition of the CHI started to make t…

Violence and Persecution of Christians Worldwide is Theme for Holy Week: A Report from Rome

By Anthea Butler

…hapel prior to the mass—although mass is too broad a term. The Good Friday service in Catholicism is not a mass, because there is no eucharistic celebration, rather, it is a commemoration of the Passion and crucifixion of Jesus. It is also the day on the liturgical calendar that the Pope does not deliver the homily. That did not matter to the thousands gathered. Pope Francis, (besides Jesus) was the attraction everyone had come to see. As the proc…

Istanbul ‘Haven of Sorts’ For LGBT Syrians and Iraqis; Cayman Islands Affirm Marriage Ban with ‘Holy Bible Evidence’; No Room for LGBTs in Malaysia’s ‘Islam-Based’ Human Rights Policy; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…and culture. In the New York Times, Andrew Siddons examines the plight of American Foreign Service officers whose same-sex spouses cannot get long-term visas in countries that do not recognize same-sex couples’ marriages. The story says, that about half of State Department positions “are effectively off-limits for Foreign Service officers who would want to move with their same sex spouses.” Vatican: No room for LGBT Catholics at upcoming World Me…

Conservative Christian Leader Attacks Commission on Conscience in War

By Rita Nakashima-Brock

…act. One of the most heartening aspects of this Truth Commission is that a number of peace groups, which have worked for decades to stop all war—the Catholic Peace Fellowship, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Mennonite Central Committee to name a few—have joined over 40 co-sponsoring organizations (including Yale Divinity School and Union Theological Seminary) to honor and protect the moral consciences o…

Pretty Girls Like Trap Church: A Movement at 2 Chainz’s Atlanta Pink House

By Anita Little

…ith other community organizers collaborated with 2 Chainz to host a church service that focused on local activism and social justice. “The trap” is typically a place where drugs are sold, but has more generally come to mean where people gather or where something is accomplished. Though in recent years, it’s become widely commodified and commercialized, trap culture has often signified a lifestyle of drug dealing, gangbanging, street violence and t…

Celebrate Jesus with Weird Merchandise!

By Gwynne Watkins

…ration and new beginnings and people coming together—concepts that get lip service during even the most secular Christmas celebrations. Easter is about death and resurrection. It’s the highest holy day of the Christian calendar. That’s not an easy thing to package, which is probably why there’s a such clean break between the bunnies-and-eggs version of Easter, and the church-service version. Merchandisers are wise to define Easter by marshmallow c…

The Death of a Black Man at the Hands of Black Officers Unveiled Something More Complex Than Whiteness

By Willie Dwayne Francois

…ies fail to erase the duly founded and deep suspicions I harbor concerning American policing. When pulled over on the side of the highway, my anxiety doesn’t abate just because a Black officer steps out of the arresting vehicle. I still see Blue. Black people are typically treated as nameless, only made visible by impositions of criminality and state control. Of course, the doctrine of Whiteness at work in the public imagination, American halls of…

RNC Takes America to Church, Mormon Style, as Rank-and-File LDS Step Up

By Joanna Brooks

…sibilities of an LDS bishop—not theology, not ritual, but rather practical service that ranged from counseling physically, economically, and spiritually distressed parishioners to “shoveling snow for the elderly” and folding chairs after church meetings. Next came Ted and Pat Oparowski, Mormons from New Hampshire who Romney had visited every month when he was serving back in the 1970s as a “home teacher,” a volunteer position held by virtually eve…

The Deafening Silence of “Religious Freedom” Defenders on Trump’s Muslim Ban

By Sunnivie Brydum

…ian cases may ultimately be useful in establishing favorable precedents in service of conservative Christian interpretations of the law. So while groups like Becket and ADF pay lip service to “religious freedom for all,” their actions speak louder than any boilerplate rhetoric ever could. Organizations that fight tooth and nail to make sure Hobby Lobby employees don’t have access to reproductive healthcare (like Becket has), or who proudly challen…