theology

Christians (understood to mean here heterosexual activist traditionalists) have become identified with actively pursuing the denial of rights and benefits to others that they themselves enjoy. In other words, the “Gospel” has been identified with the cause of self-benefiting social discrimination against a minority group, a losing hand if ever there was one.

“That’s the good news of Christianity for me. It’s not that you can be happy and whole, but rather that life is crap and you don’t know the answers. It’s good news to be freed from the oppression that there’s something that’s going to make it all better.”

Last fall, Wall Street Journal editorialists such as Peggy Noonan and Karl Rove were full of confident predictions about the election. Rove had his polls, Noonan her “vibrations,” each telling them of the near surety of a Romney victory.

What McLaren is after is a Christian faith that is not automatically hostile to other faiths and to no faith: he calls this “strong-benevolent” Christianity, observing along the way that only active peacemakers can really claim to be connected to God with any real degree of credibility—a point that should be obvious but isn’t.

On December 15, 2012 we lost a giant in the field of intellectual reflection on religion and social justice. I speak of Beverly Wildung Harrison, longtime professor of social ethics and feminist theory at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

An RD holiday sampler of stories & viewpoints we would have liked to read in 2012.

Diana Butler Bass has a message for you.

Violence against queer people runs much deeper than physical bullying, verbal harassment, or even hate-crime murder. It is a violence that takes place at the level of the psyche, the soul—at the very level at which our sense of “self” is constructed within our relation to society.

After Richard Mourdock, a Republican Senate Candidate in Indiana, called pregnancy after rape a gift from God critics were furious. Were they wrong to conclude that this popular theology leads to some very disturbing beliefs?

Hint: He’s not happy.