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

By Peter Laarman

…is important observation: …under the Bush administration the views of Council members on these issues were largely irrelevant. President Obama has made these views important as a substantial part of the Council’s mission relates to women’s role and sexual and reproductive rights. So what’s this about? I have a theory, and I admit it’s only a theory, that the Obamans continue to overreact to 2004, when Bush and the Republicans retained governing po…

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

By Peter Laarman

…ups both inside and outside of denominational lines. Extravagant Welcome While some 40 million mainline Protestants in seven denominations form the primary target audience of Believe Out Loud, the campaign’s viral outreach is also expected to attract the attention and involvement of significant numbers of Roman Catholics and younger evangelicals. Part of the idea is to remind individual Christians who totally embrace LGBT equality that there are m…

After More Mass Shootings It’s Time to Call Out White Supremacy in the Pews

By Peter Laarman

…civilians have more assault rifles in their possession than does the U.S. military. All well and good. But we have too few leaders who will talk about the deeper roots of these things or attempt to explain why American culture is “exceptional”—exceptional in its toxicity, that is. A growing number of truth telling historians are eager to help us discover these deeper roots if we are willing to listen. Here I’m thinking mainly of scholars like Roxa…

Life as a Game Show: Reading Slumdog Millionaire

By Paul Courtright

…pecial appeal these days as many Americans reckon with a financial vulnerability long familiar to those in the developing world. Globalization has elicited a new sense of kinship, a feeling Slumdog successfully evokes. Life seems more like a game show where you can walk out with a million bucks or nothing. Jamal emerges as a kind of postmodern Everyman. We hurt for him, root for him, and recognize ourselves in him. There is also an important way i…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…l be controversial, “a crucial matter for debate.” Italy: Senate Passes Civil Unions Bill Without Adoption Rights This week the Senate passed a civil unions bill after Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who has been a strong advocate for the legislation, agreed to strip the bill of a provision that would allow a person to adopt the child of their same-sex partner. Public opinion polls have shown strong support for legal recognition of couples, but wides…

The Abortion Debate, Texas Style

By Dhawn Martin

…s Legislature heard more than 13 hours of testimony regarding SB1 (Senate Bill 1), a bill designed to “regulat[e]… abortion procedures, providers, and facilities.” These regulations, which include mandates that abortion providers have hospital admitting privileges and that abortion facilities meet the “standards… for ambulatory surgical centers,” could result in the shutdown of a majority of clinics that offer abortion and health services to women…

The Fretting About Whether Democrats Are “Friendly” To Religion

By Sarah Posner

…oth lobbying and generally (unlike other non-profits, they do not have to file publicly available tax returns). This is because politicians are friendly to organized religion, and give them breaks other organizations do not enjoy. But if churches are going to pressure legislators to shape legislation to their will, it seems like there is an even greater, not lesser, need for lobbying transparency: the Establishment Clause. If churches are permitti…

Demonized and Demonizing No More.

By Joanna Brooks

…ity and between atheists and religious communities. Of course, there are still a number of people who are, if not entirely resistant to the ideas in the book, at least deeply suspicious about or don’t see much value in them. One thing I find valuable about Faitheist is that it moves atheism away from the kind of polemic that ends up focusing on truth claims in a very literal way and so mirrors the religious fundamentalisms it would like to dismant…

When God and Gender Mix: New Book Examines the Southern Holiness Movement

By Colin Chapell

…, then it will change how you view your own masculinity and femininity. Similarly, if having children matters most to you, then you can only be truly “manly” or “feminine” if you have kids. Is there anything you had to leave out? Historians always want to include every interesting anecdote and vignette from their research. We spend so much time in the archives, getting to know our subjects, and often working with very, very personal letters, diari…

Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

By Cody J. Sanders

…ed had an external source: the cruel, unremitting, merciless pounding of daily humiliation, taunting, harassment, and violence. And all of this pain visited upon these young lives because of one thing they had in common: they were not heterosexual. These suicides are not acts of “escape,” or a “cop-out” from facing life. When LGBT people resort to suicide, they are responding to far more than the pain of a few individual insults or humiliating occ…