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Turn On The News: This Isn’t a Split, It’s a Tiny Sliver of Conservatives Walking Out the Door — Introducing A New Media Criticism Column

…dless of who makes it, remember: I’m an ordained minister. If I can get comfortable with the idea that religion shouldn’t be given a free pass, reporters can surely get there. Which brings us, unfortunately, back to Kathryn Post’s piece. I’m afraid it doesn’t pass many of the tests laid out above. The trouble starts immediately, with the headline: “Reformed Church in America splits as conservative churches form new denomination.” The first two par…

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How the Study of Evangelicalism Has Blinded Us to the Problems in Evangelical Culture

…hat that term means to them. There’s a certain irony here, in that an Anglophone movement that once saw itself as uniquely positioned to save the world is now looking to the globe to salvage its reputation. ‘Evangelical’ as metaphor Noll, Marsden, and Bebbington have each retired in recent years, making Evangelicals something of a testament to their centrality to the field. The text concludes with a new essay from each editor that seeks to steward…

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Church=State in Putin’s Orthodox Empire?; Evangelical-Orthodox Anti-Gay Alliance; Malaysian Court Protects Transwomen; Catholicism (Still) Declining in Latin America; Global LGBT Recap

…defended the country’s anti-gay laws as “merely an effort to prevent the efforts of gay groups to ‘persuade this society by manipulation or dishonest political campaigning.’” Chaplin sees nothing wrong with the church and state speaking together with one voice. “The idea of an inevitable conflict between the church and the state is a peculiarity of Western civilization,” he says. “For the Orthodox civilization and way of life, as well as Islamic c…

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Conservative Christians Insist the Toxic Theology Portrayed in the Duggar Family Doc is ‘Fringe’ — But is it Really All That Different?

…es between the two. In fact, The Gospel Coalition (TGC) itself platforms a number of pastors whose views seem more or less in line with Gothard’s. TGC contributor Voddie Baucham, for example, is a strong proponent of early and often corporal punishment for children, even going so far as to advocate “all-day sessions” of physical punishment for toddlers in order to “wear them out.” Baucham, who helped popularize the Stay-at-Home-Daughter Movement,…

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The Only Common Denominator of American Conservatism is Anti-Blackness

…on as the South…and it is time for conservatives every where to unite in efforts to suppress and extinguish it.” — George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters, 1857 “Conservative” is a misnomer. The term obscures the fact that those identified as conservatives have varied more widely in views on national debt, religion, military excursions, the personal conduct of elected officials, political party affiliation and other putative con…

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LDS General Conference in the “Mormon Moment”

…ave asserted the Christianity of Mormon belief for national audiences, the number one reaction has come from Christians who seek to correct my understanding of my faith and remind me that Mormons are not, in their eyes, Christians. Some assert that they’ll be praying for my mistaken soul (and the soul of my Jewish husband too). Others seek to engage in a friendlier conversational exchange about whether Mormons profess the Nicene Creed. (We do not…

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Neuroscience Says Evil is “Over”: Not So Fast…

…say, as he does over and over, that anyone who cares to devote time and effort to understanding evolution can do it. As difficult as it can be, science is, in a very real sense, right there on the page. In fact, in the end there is nothing for it but to be out in the open, to be seen, to be comprehended. This is one of the great joys of science. Though it has its own joys, theology does not operate this way. Religion does not make sense as a set…

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New Study Touts Success of “Praying Away the Gay”

…ouse, and his colleague, Rob Tisinai, gives a better breakdown of what the numbers really mean—and it isn’t a rousing success story about “change.” “Out of 98 highly-motivated subjects, the authors found that a small, unspecified number can use prayer and counseling to shut down their sexual feelings or become a bit more bi. And possibly none who turned straight.” Even the researchers call their conclusions “overly optimistic.” “These results do n…

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The New Age Fantasy of a Celtic Church that Revered Nature and the Divine Feminine Never Existed — So What?

…han reality. Today, the idealization of Celtic Christianity endures in any number of manifestations, from a community like Iona to the shelves of New Age bookstores. Bradley argues that although the idea of a historical Celtic Church may be an exercise in “wishful thinking, romantic nostalgia and the projection of all kinds of dreams about what should and might be,” it’s also a “vehicle through which people have chased their dreams… of deeper spir…

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“Pregnancy is Not a Disease”: Birth of an Anti-Contraception Rallying Cry

…notion that pregnancy is not an illness draws, I daresay uneasily, from a number of sources. There’s the classical notion that a thing’s nature is derived from its purpose, and the purpose of female bodies is to bear children. There’s the persistent early modern fear that women, especially privileged white women, are becoming overcivilized and unnatural, not having as many privileged white babies, relying on technology and pain relief, and not fi…

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