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The Most Ominous Promises Jeff Sessions Just Made to ADF Attorneys

By Sunnivie Brydum

…ns delivered at ADF’s mysterious “Summit on Religious Liberty” in Southern California. While sections of the speech contain the platitudes we’ve come to expect from this administration about the importance of so-called religious freedom, Sessions also made some tangible promises to the current and aspiring ADF attorneys in attendance. Although some of the language is coded, it’s not hard to read between the lines to understand that the nation’s to…

Freedom Federation Summit: A Sleepy Awakening

By Sarah Posner

…d people? I’m not sure what the organizers were thinking, but kicking off this thing on tax day, knowing that tea parties were mobilizing around the country, was obvious poor planning. Last night’s activities took place inside Thomas Road Baptist Church, which seats several thousand, but only drew a few hundred spectators, and when I first arrived there were only a few dozen. This could not have made many of the first night’s top speakers — includ…

Why the Hell Does Hell Still Matter?

By Kathryn Gin

…y suffering on Earth to an afterlife of further, eternal torment. Voicing this doubt made him the target of serious, sustained criticism. Former colleagues denounced him as a heretic. Sound familiar? No, this isn’t the story of Rob Bell, whose latest book Love Wins remains among the top 10 bestsellers on Amazon.com. The flurry of voices condemning and congratulating him continues unabated, driving up sales and raising Bell’s profile [Listen to Rob…

The Only Thing Evangelicals Will Never Forgive Is Not Hating the “Other”

By Frank Schaeffer

…of The Millennium. From here, you’ll enter a major section of the Museum which highlights the Life and Ministry of Billy Graham.” If the United States Marine Corps caved to the consumer culture the way the evangelicals have, each drill instructor would be individually picked by each recruit, some choosing DIs based on looks, others on charm, yet others because this or that DI wore a cool uniform or was “nicer than those other guys.” The process m…

Lesbian Nuns: Still Immodest After All These Years

By Susan Henking

…agine the most hopeful future, what would the impact of your book be? And how would our world be different? My hope is that my book and that of other historians will help to bring about a world in which history will not be misused in order to perpetuate injustice, discrimination, and prejudice. Our world would be a better place with fewer of these poisonous forces….

The Sharks Circling Glenn Beck

By Anthea Butler

…ck reminds me very much of another televangelist, Gene Scott, who drew on whiteboard constantly, and shilled for thousands of dollars from his church in downtown Los Angeles, California, once showing the rear end of one of his racehorses for three hours until he raised the money he wanted from supporters. And Scott’s show similarly included anti-government rants: Watching Scott was entertaining. Watching Beck is maddening and painful. I’ll give it…

No Religious Left “Split” On Anti-LGBT Religious Exemption

By Sarah Posner

…LGBT rights. Ball’s first piece of evidence is a quote from the centrist think tank Third Way, long a player in efforts to find “common ground” on hot button culture war issues, an effort that in the area of LGBT rights, at least, has been rapidly sidelined. Mystifyingly, Ball—who I must add here is a reporter I have long admired—describes Third Way’s “research and activism on gay marriage” as “instrumental to that cause’s mainstream acceptance.”…

Obama Foes Misrepresent Islam with “Apostate” Tactic

By Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im

…r in Islamic Studies, Lancaster University, UK +Manan Ahmed University of Chicago +Rohit Chopra Assistant Professor of Media Studies, Babson College, Massachusetts +Elizabeth Castelli Professor and Chair, Religion Department, Barnard College at Columbia University, New York City +Omid Safi Professor of Islamic Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill +Samina Ali Novelist, San Francisco +Nishant Shahani Assistant Professor, Women’s Stud…

Birth of the Bloggernacle

By Krista Kapralos

…og explosion, but mostly to poke fun at the girls he meets in church. When hits to his blog rose above 10,000, he realized he’d hit a nerve. “These are real issues but they’re taboo to talk about,” Priesthood said. Among the complaints on his blog: Mormon girls who volunteer for 18-month missions are sent to safe cities in the United States or tropical climates, while the boys are packed off to Siberia. “We call them ‘cupcake missions,’” he said….

The Sacred and the Dead: I Love You More than Words Can Tell

By David Vanderveen

…out of the broke-down palaces we’ve constructed to really find the power behind everything that makes this universe that we experience hum. You can’t hear the river’s sweet songs—the truths of the universe—by parroting what your parents, your Sunday school flannel graphs, and your theologians spoon-feed you. Ultimately, you’ve got to feed it to the flames to get to the thing itself. You have to get on your hands and knees and stop, drop and roll r…