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Romney Bid an Opportunity, Challenge for Mormon Church
posted on June 12, 2012The Salt Lake Tribune’s Thomas Burr reports that the LDS church aims to use Romney’s candidacy as an opportunity to clarify their religion. Michael Purdy, media director for the church, states, “Our primary interest is simply to educate people about the church and to help them understand who we are.” Purdy and other Mormon news organizations respond to inaccuracies in other publications and questions from the public. Burr writes, “The faith’s newsroom website now includes a series, ‘Getting it Right,’ looking at recent news media coverage, commenting on the stories and adding links to doctrine referenced by reporters.”
Taking (Conscience) Rights Seriously
posted on June 12, 2012Prompted by the Catholic opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services’ contraception mandate, Melissa Moschella writes in Public Discourse about “why, as a pluralistic liberal democracy, we should indeed bend over backwards to craft our laws so that individuals will never be unnecessarily coerced into violating their consciences.” She states that “conscience rights” should only be violated in cases of a “truly compelling state interest—as it would be, for example, if a religion required its members to engage in human sacrifice.” According to Moschella, the HHS mandate doesn’t adequately protect Catholic’s “conscience rights.”
Creflo Dollar’s Prosperity Gospel Finds Followers and Critics
posted on June 12, 2012CNN’s Melissa Gray reports on megachurch pastor Creflo Dollar’s arrest for allegedly assaulting his teenage daughter. Since his arrest, Dollar’s Prosperity Gospel has come under renewed scrutiny inspection. Gray writes, “Prosperity ministers preach that God rewards the faithful with wealth and spiritual gifts.” Ben Phillips, a professor of theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Houston, criticizes Dollar’s message, saying, “The Prosperity Gospel tends to mask the greatest need that any individual has, and that’s to be reconciled to God through faith in Christ.”
At Meeting in St. Louis, Catholic Theologians Defend One of Their Own
posted on June 12, 2012Last weekend, a group of Catholic theologians convened in St. Louis to protest the Vatican’s censure of Sister Margaret Farley’s book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Social Ethics. At the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tim Townsend reports that the protesting theologians issued a statement, saying Sr. Farley’s book “has prompted a generation of theologians to think more deeply about the Christian meaning of personal relationships and the divine life of love that truly animates them.” Townsend writes, “As Catholic theology has branched out, bishops — who have the ultimate teaching authority in the church — have struggled to curb theological thinking they consider a potential source of confusion for the lay faithful.”
Read at St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Queers as Folk
posted on June 12, 2012Examining the effects of gay parenting, the New Family Structures Study (NFSS) challenges a decade long trend of studies that suggest gay parents, when compared to straight parents, have “no differences.” At Slate, Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin and the study’s lead author, writes that children of same-sex parents were more likely to report “being unemployed, less healthy, more depressed, more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, smoke more pot, had trouble with the law.” Also at Slate, William Saletan rebuts the findings, noting the sample focused on children whose parents did not stay together. (He also points out that the study was funded by two conservative organizations, the Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation.) “In short, these people aren’t the products of same-sex households,” Saletan notes. “They’re the products of broken homes.” He continues: “What the study shows, then, is that kids from broken homes headed by gay people develop the same problems as kids from broken homes headed by straight people.”
Women Protesters in Egypt Are Assaulted
posted on June 11, 2012On Friday, Egyptian women protesting in Cairo’s Tahrir Square against sexual harassment became the targets of physical and sexual assaults, reports Aya Batrawy for the Associated Press. After overpowering male guardians who had formed a protective ring around the female protestors, men groped and molested several of the some 50 protestors. “Sexual harassment of women, including against those who wear the Islamic headscarf or even cover their face, is common in Cairo,” writes Batrawy. “A 2008 report by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights says two-thirds of women in Egypt experienced sexual harassment daily.”
Black Leaders and Gay Advocates March in Step
posted on June 11, 2012The New York Times’ Kate Taylor writes about the growing rapprochement between gay rights activists and America’s black leaders. For years, writes Taylor, “African-American leaders often saw the gay rights groups as insensitive to racial concerns … Advocates for gay rights, in turn, sometimes blamed socially conservative African-Americans for their defeat in crucial electoral battles.” Now a new coalition is emerging, built around shared political and social justice concerns. “You must be for the civil rights of everyone, or you’re not for the civil rights of anyone,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said last week at a joint news conference of the N.A.A.C.P. and leading gay rights organizations.
Catholic Theologians Back Nun Criticized by Vatican
posted on June 11, 2012The board of the nation’s largest association of theologians has come to the defense of Sister Margaret Farley, reports St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Tim Townsend. In a statement released last Thursday, the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA), which has some 1,300 members, called Farley a “highly respected member of the theological community.” And while the Vatican recently denounced Farley’s book, Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, the CTSA stated that Farley, who once served as the association’s president, is not alone in her concern for more ethical understandings of issues of gender and sexuality, including same-sex marriage. “[It is] simply a matter of fact that faithful Catholics in every corner of the Church are raising ethical questions like those Professor Farley has addressed.”
Read at St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Miss America Has a Faith-based Platform for Kids of Prisoners
posted on June 11, 2012At Religion News Service, G. Jeffrey MacDonald writes about the religious and political advocacy of Miss America 2012, Laura Kaeppeler. While the 24-year-old Wisconsinite tours the country as America’s reigning beauty queen, Kaeppeler is also lobbying for the “Mentoring Children of Prisoners” program, a faith-based initiative that had received some $49 million in public funds over the last eight years, until Congress cut its funding last September. “I believe my life was pre-written and predestined by a higher power before I was born,” says Kaeppeler, who was raised a Roman Catholic, but later joined a non-denominational Christian church with her father who served time for a white collar crime. “What happened in my past is part of that, and (being) Miss America is part of that.”
Gay Marriage in Washington State Blocked by Proposed Referendum
posted on June 11, 2012Reuters’ Laura L. Myers reports that last Thursday, legislation legalizing same-sex marriage was scheduled to become law in the the state of Washington. Yet on Wednesday, gay marriage opponents successfully blocked the legislation from taking effect by submitting about twice the number of required signatures to create a ballot measure to repeal the statute. “Even before the Washington state bill was signed in February, political observers had expected it to be challenged at the ballot box in November,” writes Myers. “The outcome is far from certain, even in a state as politically liberal and Democratic-leaning as Washington.”