(OPINION) Just over half of churchgoing American Protestants went into the tense midterm elections believing that the people in the pews around them would vote the same way they did, according to a Lifeway Research online survey.
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(OPINION) The “Chain of Discipleship” image showing five Catholics celebrating at a church, including a woman in priest’s vestments and a person in a rainbow-lettered “PRIDE” shirt, rocked Catholic social media — especially when it appeared on the Synod of Bishops Facebook page, linked to the ongoing Synod on Synodality that began in 2021.
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(OPINION) While battles over sexuality make headlines, along with years of lawsuits over church properties and trust funds, the Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison said the dividing lines among Episcopalians and Anglicans are usually linked to a single controversial word — “sin.”
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(OPINION) Lynn vowed to tell the truth about both sides of her life. She loved to sing hymns and gospel music, while critics hailed the rhinestone feminism of her hits such as “You Ain’t Woman Enough,” “The Pill,” “Rated ‘X’” and “You’re Lookin’ at Country.”
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(OPINION) Young people in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are often told to get married because marriage is wonderful and family life is at the heart of the faith. The problem is that church leaders haven’t grasped the power of cultural trends in technology, education and economics that are fueling sharp declines in statistics linked to dating, marriage and fertility,
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(OPINION) A Pew Research Center study found that most single U.S. adults were depressed about dating and building relationships. This past February, 70% of those surveyed said “their dating lives are not going well.” These trends should be of special concern to clergy, since religious faith plays a pivotal role in deciding who gets married and who does not.
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(OPINION) The queen’s final, intimate Windsor Castle service began where her husband’s had ended 18 months earlier — with the “Kontakion of the Departed,” a tie to Prince Philip’s Orthodox roots in Greece — as if one rite was flowing into another.
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(OPINION) While the queen delivered thousands of public addresses, her Christmas talks — surrounded by family pictures and holiday decorations — were the occasions when she most openly discussed her faith and the challenges facing the nation and even her own family.
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(OPINION) It isn’t every day that one of the creators of a political thriller gets to ask its real-life protagonist to evaluate the novel’s plot. But that happened when the late Billy Wireman, president of Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina, handed the last Soviet Union leader a copy of “The Secret Diary of Mikhail Gorbachev.”
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(OPINION) The Hillbilly Thomists are a “musical collective” of Dominicans, most of whom have Bible Belt roots. The band of priests and brothers recently staged a concert in the Grand Ole Opry and over the past decade has recorded three albums of music that would sound at home at Appalachian fairs but not in most church halls.
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(OPINION) While Canterbury is urging Anglicans to keep “walking together,” the 2022 Lambeth Conference demonstrated that many of the Anglican Communion’s bishops can no longer even receive the Eucharist together because of conflicts over sexuality.
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(OPINION) Through it all, American activist and Mennonite theologian Ronald J. Sider refused to compromise on core Christian doctrines and warned believers to be realistic about what political warfare can, and cannot, accomplish.
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(OPINION) In terms of religious messages, the MCU has come a long way since Captain America, after hearing Loki described as a god, said, “There’s only one God ... and I’m pretty sure He doesn’t dress like that.” The New Rockstars YouTube channel counted 50-plus gods in “Thor: Love and Thunder” alone.
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(OPINION) It’s hard to read the Book of Psalms without encountering references to justice, judgment, the widow, the refugee, the oppressed and enemies or questions posed to God. Yet, these themes are mostly absent from modern worship music.
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(OPINION) Landon Duyka and Alex Shingleton had almost given up on Catholicism after years of being shunned for their sexuality. But then they found Old St. Patrick’s Church in Chicago, where their family was welcomed because the parish practices what its clergy calls “radical inclusivity.”
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(REVIEW) Comedians frequently take shots at taboo targets, but that wasn’t what Norm Macdonald was doing when he addressed Down syndrome while recording what became the new “Nothing Special” stand-up special on Netflix.
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(OPINION) A massacre occurred during a Sunday mass, but it wasn’t an ordinary Sunday — this was the great feast of Pentecost, which marks the end of the Easter season. What’s more, the gunmen didn’t strike in tense northern Nigeria, where Christian communities are isolated in a majority-Muslim region. This 30-minute attack was inside St. Francis Catholic Church, located in the safer southwestern state of Ondo.
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(OPINION) Debates about San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy’s elevation to the Sacred College of Cardinals have focused on divisive issues in Catholic life, although decades of sexual abuse crimes loom in the background.
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(OPINION) The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released a muted document last fall that did little to please activists on either side of the church’s wars about abortion and politicians in pews. But one passage set the stage for the current clash between Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone and a member of his flock — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
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(OPINION) A recent decision requiring Texas to grant a convicted murderer his Baptist pastor’s audible prayers and comforting touch during his execution was a rare moment in which activists on both sides of America’s culture wars cheered for “religious liberty” — a freedom that until recently didn’t require cynical “scare quotes” that suggest uncertainty.
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