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Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, and Pro-Home Birth

By Katherine Don

…ection is not a new thing. The current political environment in the U.S. silos abortion from anything else.” For Prentice, birth advocates who explicitly place childbirth care along the spectrum of reproductive care are using a framework that doesn’t make sense. “This idea that we should be in bed with people who are pro-choice because we’re allowing women to choose where to give birth—it’s actually pretty disgusting,” Prentice says. “That allowi…

Trump’s Pathological Devotion to Border Walls Isn’t Political, It’s Theological

By Alana Massey

…ave only carried so many bullets with him. Americans knew how to watch the number of reported casualties go up, but we lost our collective minds when we watched the number of confirmed active shooters in Paris go up. The images coming out of Paris in the immediate term were of a city devoured by chaos and fear rather than the stillness of carnage, more terrifying for their uncertainty. There was a brief lull in the digital noise when an official g…

Cafeteria Cockroaches and Synagogue-State Relations in Israel

By Shalom Goldman

…ut down when a diner reported finding a cockroach on a plate of rice. The closure was not done by the Israel health authorities, but rather, by the kosher supervisor of the Jerusalem Rabbinate, Rabbi Binyamin Adler. Israeli newspaper editors and bloggers had a field day composing headlines for this story. Alliteration was all the rage: “Cooked Cockroach Closes Knesset Cafeteria” was my favorite, subtitled: Kosher conundrum caused when creature coo…

Pussy Riot Members Sentenced to 2 Years for Offending Russian Orthodox Church

By The Editors

…all those who, free themselves, speak out in our support. There are a vast number, I know. I know that a huge number of Orthodox people are standing up for us. They are praying for us outside the courtroom, for the members of Pussy Riot who are incarcerated. We’ve seen the little booklets Orthodox people are handing out with prayers for those in prison. This shows that there isn’t a unified social group of Orthodox believers as the prosecution is…

Will Pope’s African Tour Change Attitudes on Divorce and LGBTQ Among African Catholics?

By Kaya Oakes

…a has gone through a startling increase in recent decades. Since 1980, the number of African Catholics has grown by 238%, in contrast to Europe, where it has grown by only 6%. Some of this may be attributable to higher fertility rates in African countries, but it also reflects the church’s success in missionary efforts. And where there are a decreasing number of vocations to the priesthood in Europe, where vocations have declined by 23%, African v…

New Poll Reveals Jews May Be Open to Change in Israel Policy

By Benjamin Weiner

…, has been best described by observers as “enigmatic”? How well will these numbers hold up if Israel’s “most favored nation” status is truly challenged by an American administration? Despite some American Jewish alienation from Israeli policy, backing for a bold new direction in the peace process is not entirely solid, a fact reflected in the same survey. 40% of respondents continue to support West Bank settlements, which, no matter how J Street c…

A Reforming Tradition Struggles With Change

By Brent Hege

…lesbian ordination forty years from now. Ironically, these two issues are closely related and contribute to the perceived need for a new Lutheran church body in North America. The ELCA is the only major Lutheran body in the United States to ordain women, and the number of dissenting ELCA Lutherans includes many female clergy who cannot simply leave the ELCA for another existing Lutheran body (such as the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod or the Wisco…

Church and State in Japan: The Case of the Yasukuni Shrine

By Mark R. Mullins

…for cancellation of enshrinement and removal of names from the register, a number of individuals decided to pursue legal action against both the shrine and the Japanese government. Several years ago, lawsuits were launched almost simultaneously by three different groups and are now being processed by the courts in Tokyo, Osaka and Okinawa. Unlike the issue of prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni, these court proceedings have received minimal media…

Pious White Reformers and Race, Then and Now

By Peter Laarman

…secondary problem was the likely horrified white response to having a huge number of newly-freed blacks living among them in both the North and the South. The alleged “degradation” of black people ruled out normal social intercourse—widespread emancipation without separation of the races was unthinkable Although “degradation” was first used to describe the condition of enslaved Africans, by 1810 the term was also being applied to Native Americans….

RDPulpit: Israel in Gaza: Right but not Smart

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

…lestinian refugees back into Israel each year for the next thirty years, a number that would not seriously endanger the population balance, apologize for its role in the 1948 expulsions of Palestinians (known as al Naqba), and offer to coordinate a worldwide effort to raise funds to compensate Palestinians for all that they lost during the Occupation; 4. Recognize a Palestinian state within borders already defined by the Geneva Accord of 2003. Thi…