Search for "evangelical left"

A Great Gulf Fixed: Implications of the Vanishing Religious Middle

By Peter Laarman

…instead amounts to moving the goalpost rightward: some notably sex-phobic evangelical and Roman Catholic individuals and entities have been rebranded as the progressive forces watch, while actual progressives (solidly feminist and pro-LGBTQ religious leaders) have disappeared from view. The silencing of the religious left is so effective that even to call attention to the rebranding process is to make oneself persona non grata. Some colleagues ha…

Is the Pope Francis Media Honeymoon Over?

By Sarah Posner

…left-liberal idol:” Francis has been made into a superstar of the liberal left. His humble background (he is a former bouncer), his dislike for the trappings of office (he cooks his own spaghetti) and his emphasis on the church’s concern for the poor has made liberals, even atheists like [La Repubblica co-founder Eugenio] Scalfari, suppose that he is as hostile to church dogma as they are. They assume, in other words, that the Pope isn’t Catholic…

Ross Douthat: Trump Is Women’s Fault for Not Having More Babies

By Patricia Miller

…aking most of the jobs with it. Three of his four sons went to college and left the area, like most of their classmates, because it held little promise for the future even 30 years ago. Two of the three had children—eight in all—just not in Monessen. The story of Monessen is writ large in its Catholic churches. Monessen once boasted five substantial Catholic churches: St. Leonard’s, which was the Irish church; Most Holy Name of Jesus, which was Sl…

Catholic Bishops End Family Synod With Little To Say To Gays; World Congress of Families Has Plenty To Say, None of it Good; How Same-Sex Marriage Came to a Buddhist Temple in Japan; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…tion in March 2013. The often vague language of the concluding report also left the door open for Francis to take further action to provide greater pastoral flexibility to local bishops and priests, as church leaders expect him to do. Francis himself seemed to signal his intentions as he delivered a powerful closing talk to the gathering on Saturday evening that denounced moral legalism in the church and declared that “the true defenders of doctri…

Screw Pragmatism!

By Daniel Schultz

…wsweek‘s religion editor Lisa Miller. Yes, yes, the sub-head (“The radical left versus the president”) is a crock, but Miller probably didn’t write that. The column itself — a consideration of the flack Pres. Obama is catching from the likes of Cornel West and Michael Lerner — is even-handed and thoughtful. Miller even manages a mild challenge of Obama in the conclusion, prodding him to take more risks in the service of his agenda. Still, the fact…

Study Shows Mainline Women Clergy Are Significantly More Progressive Than Their Male Counterparts

By Melissa Deckman

…often overlooked, gap characterizes attitudes among clergy as well. While evangelicals are the focus of so much discussion concerning religion and politics, close to 14 percent of Americans are White, non-evangelical/Protestants at last count. And women clergy in the mainline tradition are not only the strongest allies of many marginalized groups in our culture, but they also prioritize religious pluralism at rates higher than their largely alrea…

Can a Progressive Atheist Defeat the Democrats’ “Family” Man in NC?

By Sarah Jaffe

…dership regards with disdain not only the mainline denominations, but also evangelicals they consider ‘lukewarm.’… “They take the same approach to religion that Ronald Reagan took to economics,” says Neil MacBride, a political liberal with conservative evangelical convictions that put him at odds with the Family’s unorthodox fundamentalism. “Reach the elite, and the blessings will trickle down to the underlings.” Not exactly the kind of religion p…

Everyone Should Know the Story of Cary Crall

By Joanna Brooks

…ormons in support of Proposition 8 sat well with Crall. In August 2008, he left California for Church-owned Brigham Young University, where he resumed his studies as a neuroscience and mathematics major. But the campaign followed him across state lines. In conversations with non-LDS friends back home in California, Crall relates, “I found myself half-heartedly repeating some of the anti-gay marriage arguments I had read in pamphlets given to me at…

Secular End Times & Apocalyptic ‘Roosters’

By Gordon Haber

…ebellion of China, a mid-nineteenth century, quasi-Christian movement that left some twenty million corpses in its wake. Heaven on Earth is less illuminating of more recent movements. For Landes, UFO cults and movies about UFOs are interchangeable expressions of millennialism. I suggested earlier that we need to pay attention to the influence of apocalyptic fantasies on popular culture, but there’s a difference between belief and the suspension of…

End-of-Life Lessons from The Walking Dead

By Ann Neumann

…e group against survival decisions. With a young son watching him, Rick is left to blunder through the big stuff without a guide himself. Sometimes nebulous hope trumps all, as when Rick convinces his wife Laurie to carry a pregnancy to term, even though the consequences are predictably deadly. It’s the promise of a new life that the group rallies around, risking life and limb for formula and baby supplies. Sometimes the characters chafe against R…