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When it comes to the consumption of meat, our human hands have long been dirty. This isn’t a discouragement to stop striving for the good. But a moral proposal that promises to wash our filthy fingers spotlessly clean—in seconds flat—is suspect. Because they will still be dirty. The pressing moral question, of meat, becomes: given that human hands are obviously soiled, what can be done with these polluted tools?

Steve Jobs invented stuff, and that stuff changed the world.

“Spiritual advisors” upset over president’s stand for marriage equality.

It’s time to for the leaders of the Black Church to ‘put away childish things’ and to engage in a real conversation about sexuality in their communities.

Maurice Sendak lived in the shadow of the Holocaust, yet he refused to claim that identity and chosenness solely for the Jewish people.

A bump in the rocky road to marriage equality for gay and lesbian people.

The discussion surrounding NC’s Amendment 1 has taken the shape of a simplistic ideological battle over homosexuality and religion. “It’s as if some Christians feel like they have permission to discriminate or hate,” Jay Bakker told me. “And they get so obsessed with it that they ignore the fact that it would harm children, it would harm women, it would harm people in domestic partnerships. It’s like they’ve just become blind to that because they’ve built up such resentment towards gays and lesbians. And that’s really, really frightening to me.”

Is it religion?

Anti-abortion news and opinion websites have taken to calling Chinese dissident Guangcheng Chen “pro-life,” which is fundamentally misleading. Chen is not opposed to abortion, per se, he’s opposed to forced abortion.

The fact is, there is a significant and sustained tradition within Catholic (and not only Catholic) religious thought, which stands in sharp opposition to much liberal political reasoning. Yet it’s that very liberal reasoning which would give religions a designated space where they can be faithful, without imposing such faithfulness on others—provided those groups implicitly agree to the underlying liberal presuppositions.