Search

Blocks Muslim women from event she claims is intended to protect Muslim women.

LGBT advocates, sitting at the edges of the convention floor, were deemed a “security concern.”

In spite of some impassioned campaigning by Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Says she will engage Republicans who have been “laissez-faire” about the religious right.

What the anti-gay pressure on the Romney campaign means.

The latest Bloggingheads.

And “The Clergy Project” is there to serve as safe haven.

But activists believe the question is far from settled.

Recently, Mitt Romney has been referring to the Israeli Prime Minister as ‘my friend,’ and invoking memories of the short period when the two ambitious young businessmen were working for the same Boston consulting firm in the 1970s. The elder Netanyahu’s death has given Romney yet another opportunity to position himself as ‘pro-Israel’—or in his words, a champion of “all who care about Israel.”

Throughout the history of the Church, bishops and popes have struggled mightily to keep committed celibate Catholic women under control. Already in the early Christian centuries male Church leaders forced virgins to describe themselves as “brides of Christ” rather than use the male martial imagery they had come to use during the Roman persecutions. The early equality between male and female desert monastics was likewise undercut when eighth century bishops began taking control of women’s monasteries and ordained monks to the priesthood for the first time (but not nuns, of course). And as, throughout the following centuries, groups of dedicated Christian women came together—canonesses, Beguines, beatas, recluses—popes, bishops, and male theologians went to great lengths to rein them in.