lgbtq

Sexuality/Gender

“The Gift of Gay”: Father Matthew Kelty, Confessor to Thomas Merton, Dies at 96

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“People always leaving just as other folks arrive.” That is the line that suddenly came to mind when I learned that Father Matthew Kelty left this world peacefully at noon on Friday last. This is a great loss to those of us newly, and not-so-newly, arrived, and I wanted to try to explain why I think this is so. This remarkable monk spent fifty off-and-on years at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, where he was the last confessor that Thomas Merton ever had; and if that wasn’t enough to warrant further discussion, he was also a gay priest who came out in one of his most eloquent essays at the ripe old age of ninety. We will not soon see the likes of such monks again.

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Sexuality/Gender

AIDS Anniversary: Thirty is the New Eternity

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The 30th wedding anniversary calls for pearls, various websites say. And yet, we have no weddings really, from the federal point of view. So what does the 30th mean? Is it the beginning of the end? The end of the beginning? The eschaton? For some, AIDS/HIV is one of the mythic horsemen of the apocalypse. The Salvation Army writes of the “three horsemen of the Russian Apocalypse—AIDS” Others write of the “hybrid horseman of the apocalypse: the global AIDS pandemic.” We debate whether an HIV-positive diagnosis—or even an AIDS diagnosis—is the end of the world. And we write of “the virus at the end of the world.” The victories seem somehow pyrrhic.

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(A)theologies

Mass Conversion: Changing Churches to Stop the Church From Changing

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The decision of Episcopal churches like St. Luke’s to convert en masse to Roman Catholicism while retaining a quasi-medieval Anglican liturgy is not, however, a decision to move into this ever-emerging ecclesial reality. It is a solemn retreat into an imagined past where a priest’s sacramental office itself, his back turned to the congregation, protects him from the conflicted desires and diverse stirrings of the wider church.

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Sexuality/Gender

American Anti-Gay Campaign in Africa Opposes “Fictitious Sexual Rights”

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Sharon Slater, American anti-gay activist and president of Family Watch International, recently encouraged delegates attending a law conference in Lagos, Nigeria to resist the United Nations’ calls to decriminalize homosexuality. Keynoting the Nigerian Bar Association Conference, Slater told delegates that they would lose their religious and parental rights if they supported “fictitious sexual rights.” One such “fictitious right” is the right to engage in same-sex sexual relationships without going to jail.

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(A)theologies, Christian Nationalism, Politics/Law

Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

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The New Apostolic Reformation has been in the news a great deal since Rick Perry first announced his prayer rally, The Response. Sarah Posner has an investigative journalist’s view of this movement, its place in religious movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, and in politics. Here she is in conversation with Anthea Butler, a scholar of American religious history.

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