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3 Reasons Catholic Bishops Are Holding Their Tongues on GOP Health Care Debacle

By Patricia Miller

…not to … preventing birth.” But, as New York Times reports, under Trump a number of anti-contraception activists have been given prominent roles in the administration. They are moving not just to finalize a rule that would allow any entity to opt-out of the contraceptive mandate for any reason, which has long been on the bishops’ wish list, but have a history of attacking contraception in general. Katy Talento, who is now a White House domestic p…

UN Human Rights Council Creates LGBT Watchdog; Orthodox Council Affirms Traditional Teaching on Family; Pope Francis Says Church Should Apologize to Gays; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ctims of the Orlando massacre have reportedly been assaulted and forced to flee their homes. From Robbie Corey-Boulet at Associated Press: The photo has been widely shared on social media and two of the men said that in the days after it was published an angry mob punched and kicked them while shouting anti-gay slurs. The men spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for their safety. Four of the six men, including the two attacked,…

Show Me the Way of the Hebrews: The Making of an African American Rabbi

By J. Lester Feder

…row house he converted into a shul by knocking out the walls on the ground floor to create a sanctuary. Aronoff attended classes alongside students from other synagogues around the city, where the rabbi lead informal discussion sessions based each week on a different subject—a ritual’s details, the laws of keeping kosher, the celebration of the High Holy Days. Shoulson also had Aronoff attend classes at a local Jewish college, and had Aronoff subm…

An Extravagant Welcome For All: Believe Out Loud, a Faith-Based LGBT Campaign, Launches

By Peter Laarman

…mes Believe Out Loud as a “tremendous new movement that will give these conflicted clergy friends better opportunities to raise their voices in support of love, hospitality, and justice for all people.” The Uncertain Middle A major strength of the new campaign is that it builds directly a very large and recent quantitative study of clergy attitudes that was conducted by Robert P. Jones of Public Religion Research. Jones identified roughly 40 perce…

Exclusive: Christian Right Bill Mill, Project Blitz, Hasn’t Gone Away, It’s Just Gotten More Secretive

By Frederick Clarkson

…14 of which have passed, according to Blitz Watch. Whether the dip in the number of bills introduced is attributable to Covid-19, the toxicity of the Project Blitz brand, or some other combination of factors is hard to say. In 2020 and 2021, 24 of the bills introduced involved displays of In God We Trust in public buildings or on license plates, while 16 were largely about religious exemptions and state versions of the federal Religious Freedom R…

A Post-Christian America? Not Quite—Though Devoutly to be Wished

By Peter Laarman

…say about Jon Meacham’s Newsweek piece on the fairly sharp fall-off in the number of Americans self-identifying as Christian (in the newly-released ARIS survey), this bloghead initially demurred. I mean, the amiable and well-informed Meacham said what I would have said: on balance, it’s a good thing that the various and dangerous forms of grievance associated with “Christian nation” thinking should now recede. It’s a good thing that more have come…

Life as a Game Show: Reading Slumdog Millionaire

By Paul Courtright

…iar Bollywood genre. The musical score crackles with energy. There are any number of reasons why Slumdog has emerged as one of this year’s favorites among American audiences. Perhaps the Oscar nominations reflect India’s rise as a global economic power, as well as a cinematic one. And, while the story is set in India, there is something familiar to American audiences about the kid who finds his way to success and love through struggle in an indiff…

Catholic Leaders Offer Criticism, Support to Boxer Pacquiao After Anti-Gay Comments…

By Peter Montgomery

…ntinue an anti-LGBT crackdown following an election in which politicians inflamed anti-gay sentiment to win political support. Philippines: Catholic Leaders Offer Criticism, Support to Boxer Pacquiao After Anti-Gay Comments At New Ways Ministry, Bob Shine reviews some of the reaction by Catholic officials to the international controversy over anti-gay comments by boxer Manny Pacquiao, who said in a recent interview that people in same-sex relation…

The Abortion Debate, Texas Style

By Dhawn Martin

…ont of E2.010 and waited. The committee meeting began. Procedures were briefly outlined, and we were informed that over 1600 individuals had registered to testify. That number was quickly growing, even with testimony set to end at midnight. It was gonna be a long day, and over a thousand Texans would not get to voice their opinion. After the main elements of the bill were highlighted by its author, the games commenced. Democratic lawmakers deploye…

The Fretting About Whether Democrats Are “Friendly” To Religion

By Sarah Posner

…o. A big part of religious lobbying is smoke and mirrors; this pastor is influential because he has a big megachurch; the bishops are influential because they preside over 19,000 parishes across the country. But we don’t have a plethora of good measurements of whether the people who go to those churches care about or pay attention to leaderships’ political positions, and if they do, whether they agree with them or even like the idea of religious l…