Religion Dispatches
The sages, or rabbis, whose teachings were collected in the Mishnah, had a concept they called ‘tumah,’ or ritual impurity. This term, which to some readers might conjure visions of judgmental tub-thumpers, isn’t at all equivalent to today’s abstinence warriors.
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I think all of these [Christian rock stars] who find the courage to share their truth make a huge impact, and if everyone in contemporary Christian music and the church was honest about their own truth, their own questions, and their own beliefs, I think we would progress a lot quicker.
Read MoreGod tells you not just the way you should be, but the way you actually are, and if you accept that, you will be blessed. If you step outside of it, you’re just asking for trouble. So arguing against this structure asks conservative white evangelicals to rewire their entire sense of reality.
Read MoreAttitudes about sex have come to signal a person or group’s attitudes about modernity itself. Arguments about gender roles, birth control, abortion, sex education, and LGBTQ rights have become central to the religious and political identity of American Christians.
Read MoreThe past two popes insist, against mounting evidence, that the gender binary, male and female, is given in nature and blessed by God. God, a male after all, created them Male and Female. The Genesis account inconveniently leaves out the detail about the blue and pink blankets and onesies.
Read MoreIf they were to fully and meaningfully implement this policy, I doubt that the Convention would be left with any churches as members, for they all remain complicit with racist and sexist structures that rob many of us of our very humanity.
Read MoreWhile the “exvangelical” community was designed to help former evangelicals heal from a toxic environment, a subgroup of exvangelicals calling itself the “Magdalene Collective” released a statement that’s been called transphobic and that many see as a replication of the very abusive patterns from which they’d been trying to escape.
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While some have argued that opposition to a woman’s right to make decisions about her body is a legitimate religious freedom issue, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the religious freedom issue at stake in the abortion debate.
Read MoreMany have argued that Trump is little more than a “scam artist” who has duped evangelicals into following him. But it’s the other way around: Trump didn’t use the religious right to win the presidency; the religious right used Trump to get what it wanted.
Read MoreIn continuing to oppose women’s ordination the pope argues that something has to be revealed in order for it to be done; but that we don’t do it so it must not have been revealed. A cursory examination of change on Catholic views of the death penalty and usury make quick mincemeat of that argument. Revelation provides direction toward increased justice; it’s not a checklist of historical givens.
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