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After All the Handwringing We’re Now Seeing Exactly Why Conservative Christians Supported Trump

By Hollis Phelps and L. Benjamin Rolsky

…that Trump is such an artist, but it’s the other way around: Trump didn’t use the religious right to win the presidency; the religious right used Trump to get what it wanted. And this itself is nothing new, despite claims to the contrary which, we think, has more to say about the commentator than the subject in question. Although it may be convenient and more than a little self-serving to view Trump as an aberration who doesn’t align with desired…

Obama Gets Religion in Indonesia

By Hussein Rashid

…e Afghanistan and Pakistan have governments that are in various degrees of uselessness. There is a political angle to Obama’s support of Indonesia, as he attempts to set-up rival powers with China; Indonesia’s close relationship with Australia makes them a credible power center. Just as important, Obama recognizes that democracy is messy, painful, and not the same everywhere. Indonesia carved out its own understanding of democracy that recognizes…

Religious Freedom Historian John Ragosta on “Religious Freedom”

By Frederick Clarkson

…on) which may happen to be inconsistent with a person’s beliefs. Jefferson used the obvious example of child sacrifice or a law which prohibited the slaughter of lambs when the military was in short supply of wool uniforms. The best modern example is laws against racial discrimination: While many people insisted that interracial dating or marriage violated their religion, the Supreme Court, in the 1983 case of Bob Jones University v. United States…

Most U.S. Catholics Back Marriage Equality, But Knights of Columbus Pour Millions into Opposition

By Peter Montgomery

…NOM have provided more than 55 percent of the funding. NOM, which loves to use alarmist rhetoric about rich gay funders, is itself heavily dependent on big donors. Earlier this month it announced that a donor had given the group $2 million to use as a 2-for-1 matching grant for its anti-marriage and anti-Obama campaigns. How do progressive Catholics respond to the combined forces of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the money machines th…

This Year in Satanism

By Joseph Laycock

…the Satanic Temple demanded an apology. FEBRUARY In February, the media focused on Miranda Barbour, 19, who was accused of killing a man she met on Craigslist. The “Craigslist Killer” alleged that she had been inducted into a Satanic cult at an early age and was forced to kill numerous people. In interviews, Gilmore and Greaves dismissed Barbour’s claims, diffusing some of the Satanic Panic. MARCH Fred Phelps died on March 19. Amid rumors that the…

Taking the Christ Back Out of Christmas: Secularizing the Season

By C. Joshua Villines

…Advent—a time when anticipating the celebration of Jesus’ first arrival causes us to focus on the doctrine of His Second Coming. On the night of December 24th we will focus on the Nativity; but we use the time in the four weeks prior to look toward the distant future and the end of time. For this reason, the texts read in Christian churches this time of year are about judgment and divine anger, separating wheat from chaff, or the axe that rests a…

The End of My Line: It’s Okay to Embrace The ‘Covid Baby Bust’

By Monica Byrne

…something different now—not just my own blood, but a larger communion of the self in the world. I write every morning in my kitchen, stirring my coffee with one of Grammy’s spoons. I’ll never use it in a grand candlelit dinner with my children and their children. It’s for everyday use. I am the end of my line. But also, the beginning of another kind….

The Problem of ‘Evil’ in Describing Southern Baptist Abuse Crisis

By Carol Howard Merritt

…rn Baptist Church upholds gracious submission as godly and relegates the abuse as “satanic,” casting them into different realms. Yet, submission and abuse should not occupy spaces so far apart in our theological imaginations, because they work together. When leaders demand unquestioning obedience from women and girls, it sets up the perfect environment for predation to occur. He was both people. I thought about the word hypocrisy: its origin is fr…

The Leadership Crisis at the End of the Megachurch Era

By Benjamin Dueholm

…, and lack of accountability, which, in effect, he had become. Strongmen abuse their people, verbally or even physically, and shelter other kinds of abuse behind opaque leadership structures and authoritarian rules. Mark Driscoll, the butch young fellow who built a Seattle-area megachurch, was celebrated for his strongman style, which included using juvenile language against people whose sexual orientations and gender expressions he didn’t approve…

I Agree With Douthat, Church Can’t Accept Gay Marriage

By Patricia Miller

…take it back nearly 50 years to when it was on the brink of approving the use of contraception but backed down because it would codify the idea, which it had already tacitly accepted, that the purpose of marriage wasn’t limited to reproduction. This, in turn, would negate much of the church’s biological determinism around the role of women. Many of the doctrinal developments on issues related to sex and women since then have been ever-more elabor…