By every tangible measure, Pope Francis is no different from his predecessors. He opposes abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage, adoptions by gay couples, and has not called off the inquiry into the social activism of American nuns. And yet simply by saying a few things about gays and atheists that were not outright hateful and that many other Christians had long ago said, and by expressing some gentle criticisms of the current scandalous state of wealth inequality, he has driven the right and the Republican party in in this country into a tizzy. It just shows how much they have assumed that successive popes were Tea Party members in all but name. [Read more…]

R. Albert Mohler is a highly influential evangelical Christian theologian. He confirms what I wrote about earlier, that the new evangelical push to join the Catholics against contraception is not some random deviation from more pressing concerns but is definitely being pursued as a major component of a long term strategy. [Read more…]

Gary Leupp is a professor of History at Tufts University who also holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. In a long essay, he tries to understand the origins of Christian homophobia, using as his takeoff point the issue of whether Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson’s much-publicized quoting of the Bible in support of his views was accurate. [Read more…]

Creationists love dinosaurs and insist that humans lived contemporaneously with them. One of the things that struck me when writing about the financial travails of Ken Ham’s vanity ark project are the many problems that creationists face with the dinosaurs. Since the Noah’s flood story requires that at least a pair of every species be saved, that means two dinosaurs of every ‘kind’ at a minimum had to be accommodated, creating a huge space and resources problem right off the bat. Ham partially deals with that one by suggesting that Noah could have chosen ‘teenage’ dinosaurs (!) to save space. [Read more…]

When it comes to the Catholic church, I have gone somewhat easy on the nuns. It is true that they have had a history of terrible cruelty and abuse towards the young ‘fallen’ women who were consigned to their care but in more recent times, at least in the US, they have been some of the more progressive voices within the church and not involved the horrific sexual abuses that have been exposed. [Read more…]

When Ken Ham opened his Creation Museum in Kentucky, it defied skeptics by drawing nearly 400,000 visitors in its first year of 2007, well above the targeted 250,000. This initial success may be one reason for his organization Answers in Genesis to embark on an even more grandiose plan to build a supposedly life-size replica of the fabled Noah’s Ark, to show people how it could have contained all the animals. “The 800-acre amusement park is supposed to feature a life-size Noah’s Ark built by Amish craftsmen, a walled city, a zoo featuring Noah’s animals, a Ten Plagues Ride, a Tower of Babel, a first-century village, an aviary and a children’s area.” [Read more…]

Why do the leaders of some religious groups like the Catholics and now even evangelicals oppose contraception, to the extent of even objecting to health insurance policies covering it? After all, access to safe, reliable, and easy contraception has to be one of the most beneficial advances that society has made. And the fact that 99% of all sexually active women use some form of birth control suggests that women are quietly ignoring the words of their religious leaders. [Read more…]

Dan Savage says something that absolutely resonates with me. It had never bothered me to have people wish me merry Christmas or for me to wish them similarly in return. But this whole nonsense of the ‘war of Christmas’ which has made the phrase ‘merry Christmas’ into a shibboleth to prove that one was not hostile to Christmas has actually had the reverse effect, where I hesitate to say it so as to avoid looking like I am on the side of the Christian nutcases. [Read more…]