Nicole Neroulias writes at The Scoop that despite common reporting, same sex marriage is about a lot more than religion.

Yesterday the USCCB spelled out exactly why they are opposed to the Obama administration’s provision of birth control to all insured women without a copay.  The Church would strongly prefer to tell employers and employees, at least the ones that answer to Catholic leadership, how to manage their reproductive rights.  If the issue were just money (no Catholic money used to “subsidize” contraceptives), the compromise that Obama and Sebelius struck with insurance companies–that companies will provide contraception to individuals directly, without implicating the employer–would satisfy the USCCB.  It doesn’t.  Which reminds me, will Kathleen Sebelius still give the graduation speech at Georgetown University?

The Economist follows up on a May 6th New York Times feature about “The Life of Jesus Christ,” a play performed by the inmates of Angola prison in Louisiana, with an article of its own.  The New York Times used the title, “In Prison, Play With Trial at Its Heart Resonates,” The Economist, “Enacting forgiveness and redemption.”  Both remind me of the brilliant piece by Liliana Segura at Colorlines last year, “Dispatch From Angola: Faith-Based Slavery in a Louisiana Prison.”

"Shettima Kagu Qur'an," northeast Nigerian manuscript (approx 16th century). Source: University of London Early Nigerian Manuscripts Project.

This post is the third in a series on Muslim schooling in Northern Nigeria. The first post gave an overview of the series, and the second discussed Qur’anic schools.

by Alex Thurston

In Nigeria, advanced Islamic education–the step following one’s basic instruction in the Qur’an–takes various forms. Here, I’ll examine the traditional settings for advanced Islamic education. The term “traditional” is a problematic one, as “traditions” are sometimes much more recent – and more consciously invented – than outsiders might assume. But the term has some use for describing systems that have evolved over time and were not directly created by colonial or postcolonial governments or by postcolonial reformist movements. “Advanced Islamic education,” meanwhile, refers here to training beyond the memorization of the Qur’an and instruction in the basic ritual requirements of Islam.

This kind of training has occurred for centuries, and still occurs, in the homes and schools of individual teachers. Many Northern Muslims begin (as do their counterparts elsewhere in West Africa) by studying the Qur’an and basic religious instruction with their fathers or with other family members, but advanced training usually necessitates outside mentors. Religious seekers most often proceed from the Qur’an to introductory texts of Maliki fiqh (jurisprudence). The Maliki School, one of four main Sunni schools of legal thought, is the most widespread in North and West Africa. Introductory Maliki texts (some of which are available in Arabic and in translation here) treat similar issues, ranging from the requirements of prayer to the rules of inheritance. The curriculum proceeds not thematically, but in levels of complexity; each text deals with the same issues in greater depth, meaning that the student who advances to the level of mastering the Risala (Epistle) of Ibn Abi Zaid al Qayrawani or the Mukhtasar (Compendium) of Khalil ibn Ishaq has a deep grasp of fiqh. Sheikhs often teach by parsing Arabic texts line by line in local languages until students have mastered each lesson; even at this stage, memorization can play a large role in learning.

Once a student has a firm foundation in fiqh, he often proceeds to study with masters who have specialized competencies in areas like tafsir (exegesis of the Qur’an), hadith (reported words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, which have relevance for law in addition to other fields), Sufism, Arabic (including grammar), literature, astronomy (crucial for determining the direction of prayer or qibla), and other fields. Some students go even further in their study of fiqh. The traditional method of study can involve considerable travel; the nineteenth-century Fulani conqueror Sheikh Uthman dan Fodio went from present-day Northern Nigeria as far as Agadez, in the north of present-day Niger. Some traveling scholars, in the course of pilgrimage to Mecca, studied with masters in Cairo, Medina, and Mecca.

Traditional methods have attracted criticism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Critics charge that students’ grasp of Arabic, especially spoken Arabic, is weak, or that the curriculum wastes time and discourages debate and critical thought. Yet traditional methods have proven highly durable as well as highly adaptable. One Sufi scholar I met in Kano ran a modernized “Islamiyya” school (these schools will be the topic of the next post), a massive complex with uniformed students, Western-style classrooms, and a science lab, but his family also continued to offer traditional-style lessons at their late father’s home in the old city. Traditional methods and curricula also provided the basis for colonial attempts at modernized Islamic education at Kano’s Shahuci Judicial School (founded 1928) and the School for Arabic Studies (founded 1934). In these manifestations, “traditional” and “modern” methods not only coexist, but are deeply in dialogue with one another.

It also seems that with the passage of time, more people have access to advanced Islamic education in the traditional mold. The growth of cities has increased the number of scholars together in major urban centers, potentially reducing the need for travel to far-flung destinations. The proliferation of mosques has created more spaces where scholars can teach. As a male researcher in a society that discourages close interactions between unmarried men and women, I had limited access to women’s perspectives, but my sense is that more female scholars exist now than in the past, and that they are offering lessons in their homes to large numbers of women. The dissemination of Islamic teachings and debates over Islamic issues on the radio also increases the educational opportunities available to women. This is not to say that there were not educated women in the past – Nana Asma’u, one of Sheikh Uthman dan Fodio’s daughters, earned a tremendous and enduring reputation for her scholarly achievements.

Advanced religious education is relevant for scholars, but also for any Muslim adult seeking deeper knowledge of scripture, law, and other fields. Many people pair a career in teaching and scholarship with another career; the archetype in Kano is the scholar-trader, of which one finds many to the present day, conducting trade by day and teaching their specialty to young students in the evenings.

Alex Thurston is a Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies at Northwestern University. For 2011-2012, he is conducting dissertation fieldwork in Northern Nigeria. He blogs at http://sahelblog.wordpress.com. Read Alex’s previous posts on religion in Nigeria here.

With support from the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs.

With this amendment’s passage, North Carolina becomes the 31^st state to pass an amendment upholding “traditional marriage.”  The Pew Center for the States reports that “a similar ban is on the ballot later this year in Minnesota. In four other states, supporters of gay marriage are on the offensive. In Maryland and Washington, voters may be asked to decide whether to allow new laws permitting same-sex marriage to take effect, although neither measure has not qualified for the ballot yet. And in Maine, a citizen initiative later this year would authorize gay marriage. Proponents are trying to get a similar proposal on the ballot in Ohio.” An infographic map charting the state of gay marriage in the United States can be found on their website.

The New York Times outlined the concern, raised by a group of family law professors from across the state, that this vague language could also apply to the more than 150,000 straight couples in the state who live together but are unmarried. The amendment could also invalidate domestic-violence protections, undercut child custody arrangements and jeopardize hospital visiting rights.”

Religious leaders such as Rev. Billy Graham positioned this law as gay versus God, thus contributing to the misperception that only “homosexuals” will be impacted by this decision. According to The Advocate, earlier polling results indicate that a number of voters bought into Graham’s interpretation of the amendment and thought they were voting to oppose “homosexual” marriage. When those surveyed were informed about the amendment’s broad authority to outlaw civil unions, only 38% supported it, compared to 46% who opposed.

In passing the amendment, many white and African-American conservatives set political differences aside to vote in accordance with a literalist interpretation of the bible. Even though the NAACP, and many black leaders–religious leaders or otherwise–campaigned hard against the amendment, The Charlotte Observer stated, “many black voters continued to see same-sex marriage not as a civil rights issue, but as a lifestyle choice with which they don’t agree.”

Over at Alternet, Kristin Rawls refutes this analysis of the black and Latino vote, noting the multi-racial coalitions formed to defeat the amendment.  She adds that the media did not apply similar scrutiny to the white vote.

Among the organizations united in the Vote for Marriage NC (http://www.voteformarriagenc.com) coalition include the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), Christian Action League, NC Values Coalition, African American Pastors, and NC Baptists. Also the Catholic Diocese in North Carolina’s non-partisan public policy organization Catholic Voice North Carolina worked with their Executive Committee to pass this amendment with the diocese contributing $100,000 to this cause.

Over at Religion Dispatches, Peter Montgomery  chronicles some of the “loving” actions done by those seeking to preserve the institution of marriage. These voices include NOM spokesperson The Rev. Patrick Wooden, who reminisces about those bygone days when anti-LGBT violence was the norm, the wife of a state senator endorsing this amendment in order to populate the diminishing Caucasian race and Pastor Sean Harris of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville encouraging his churchgoers to beat any “homosexual” or “butch” tendencies out of their sons and daughters.

As reported by Indy Week “the anti-Amendment One campaign chose not to emphasize the point about civil unions in its advertising, however. Instead, the Coalition to Protect All NC Families raised alarms about ‘unintended harms’ that could be caused by the language, which makes heterosexual marriage ‘the only domestic legal union’ valid in the state. This strategy served to bring together  a number of African-American clergy and pro-LGBT faith based coalitions, a move that challenges NOM’s strategy  to use “homosexual marriage” as a wedge issue to split the Democratic party by pitting pro-gay liberal activists and African American and Latino leaders against one another. In a statement, George Reed, Executive Director of the North Carolina Council of Churches reflected on these advocacy efforts, “Individuals who may not believe in gay marriage have come to realize that they also do not believe that the state’s foundational document, its bedrock of freedom, should be used to discriminate.”

Progress NC lists churches, faith based organizations and over 500 religious leaders, who have been actively campaigning against Amendment One. Also, a complete list of religious groups opposing the amendment can be found at Protect NC Families website.

Following this development, a group of LGBT couples in North Carolina plan to request marriage licenses as part of a “We Do Campaign for Southern Equality” to continue the fight for marriage equality and the pro-gay activist community in North Carolina plans to “look at all legal options and political options” to overturn the amendment. In addition, some wish to move the 2012 DNC convention from Charlotte to a more pro-gay environment. Also, the pro-gay activist community in North Carolina plans to “look at all legal options and political options” to overturn the amendment.

Their options will undoubtedly be governed by who assumes the position in the Oval Office. At present, Mitt Romney proclaims he will support the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Given the donation made to NOM by Romney’s Super Pac (NOM has since endorsed him for President) Romney appears to be making inroads toward convincing all but the most dogmatic fundamentalist that he is the “pro family candidate.”

In Obama’s public announcement in which he stated that he now supports same sex marriage, he noted that the Justice Department will not enforce DOMA, an act they consider a violation of the equal protection clause. While Obama expressed his disappointed in the Amendment One ruling, he also stated that same sex marriage is an issue that should be left up to the states. Whether Obama’s support is pre-election pandering–the kind that has no teeth once the ballots are counted–remains to be seen.

This post was updated on May 16, 2012.

The early church had no specific rite for marriage. This was left up to the secular authorities of the Roman Empire, since marriage is a legal concern for the legitimacy of heirs. When the Empire became Christian under Constantine, Christian emperors continued the imperial control of marriage, as the Code of Justinian makes clear. When the Empire faltered in the West, church courts took up the role of legal adjudicator of valid marriages. But there was still no special religious meaning to the institution. As the best scholar of sacramental history, Joseph Martos, puts it: “Before the eleventh century there was no such thing as a Christian wedding ceremony in the Latin church, and throughout the Middle Ages there was no single church ritual for solemnizing marriage between Christians.”

Which is to say that I’m just back at this beloved desk after spending grinding, disenchanting weeks in the Brooklyn courthouse.  If you didn’t notice I was even gone, you (and I!) have Nora Connor, Ashley Baxstrom and Amy Levin to thank for keeping the lights on.  They too should not get another summons for about 10 years.

Jim Davis sent me his latest for the Sun Sentinel.  An obituary of sorts for bishop Anthony J. O’Connell.  In the article headline, Davis calls O’Connell a “former Palm prelate,” which my semi-literal mind ran away with.  O’Connell, after all, had busy hands.  He was the second Palm Beach priest to admit to sexual misconduct, after Bishop J. Keith Symons, his immediate predecessor.

From Amy Levin’s recent post at Feminism and Religion:

I think it is important for any serious reflection of feminism and religion to take seriously both the liberating possibilities of liberalism, as well as the ideological limits it imposes. As feminists, religious or secular, we have always had to be cautious of rallying under the aegis of a shared experience, and yet our experiences of living in patriarchal cultures are what draw us together from both the left and the right.

The Immanent Frame has running an absolutely must read! series on the politics of religious freedom.  Today’s contribution is a post by Ann Pellegrini (a friend and faculty member of Religious Studies here at NYU; her office is just a few doors down) about the 1947 Supreme Court case Everson v. Board of Education.  Ann writes that the case was the first to hold that “the disestablishment provision of the First Amendment is binding on the states, and not just on the federal government.”  She continues:

On the one hand, this geographic shift has meant that formalized practices of religious establishment in individual states are henceforth subject to scrutiny and challenge. On the other, the application of the disestablishment principle to the states has also contributed, I’d argue, to the plaints of many Christians that a monolithically secular state is driving religion from public life. What we have is a regionalization of public conflicts over the place of religion and religious people in public life and in the state. This “and” is necessary, for the public is not the state—a confusion that regularly trips up public debates about the meaning and practice of religious freedom in the United States.

The rather supercilious (and surprisingly unread) First Things blogger Matthew J. Franck dragged Wendell Berry’s April 23 Jefferson Lecture at the Kennedy Center through the fields.  At Crisis Magazine, Christopher Shannon says not so fast.  Shannon writes, “Where one stands on [Wendell] Berry says a lot about where one stands on Catholicism and America, or more precisely on Catholicism in America.”

Speaking of court:  A recent case of sexual abuse in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn reached the pages of the New York Times this week.  The story hook?  The community has hazed Mordechai Jungreis for reporting his son’s abuse to the police.  He’s lost his apartment, he’s hounded with menacing phone calls, even the parents of other victims have criticized his report of the crime.  Sharon Otterman and Ray Rivera write:

Their communities, headed by dynastic leaders called rebbes, strive to preserve their centuries-old customs by resisting the contaminating influences of the outside world. While some ultra-Orthodox rabbis now argue that a child molester should be reported to the police, others strictly adhere to an ancient prohibition against mesirah, the turning in of a Jew to non-Jewish authorities, and consider publicly airing allegations against fellow Jews to be chillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name.

The soon-to-be-former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has found time in his schedule to write an article for Prospect Magazine (reprinted online here) about the blood donation system and how it constitutes “a large-scale redistribution of blood form the poor to the rich.”

To the ever broadening category of Catholic Church vs. Women, we add today’s entry:  the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has formalized it’s disapproval of the Girl Scouts of the USA with an official inquiry.  It’s hard to not giggle at the USCCB following up its harassment of the women religious with the tweens with badges, but there you have the church’s priorities clearly demonstrated.

The Washington Post, via an AP article by David Crary, quotes Girl Scouts’ spokewoman Michelle Tompskins:

“For us, there’s an overarching sadness to it,” Tompkins added. “We’re just trying to further girls’ leadership.”

Exactly.

Read more on the Girl Scout inquiry here, and here.

Amy Levin: It’s barely been a day and President Barack Obama’s personal endorsement (belief? affirmation? slow and agonizing compromise?) of same-sex marriage in an interview with ABC’s Robin Robert’s has spread like wildfire across the news, blog, and twitter spheres. Obama’s comments came just a day after North Carolina passed a ban on same-sex marriage, becoming the 30th state to do so. Reaction to Obama has been divided to say the least. Some are excited, some are livid, and others are confused.

While the majority of pundits across the spectrum are wondering if this is anything more than a political ploy for re-election. However, a few medialites focused in on Obama’s confession as an expression of faith. Today at The Washington Post, Elizabeth Tenety highlights Obama’s evolution (yes, he believes in evolution) on the issue, as he calls it, as well as that fact that he “ invoked Christ and the Golden Rule in detailing how he has changed.” Obama did, in fact, speak about his religious beliefs in his interview, however, given the short attention span of Americans and ability to register about 140 characters of written word, most of us have been fed this simple sugary statement: “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

But there’s more. Featuring Jesus Christ:

… [Michelle and I] are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a dad and a husband and hopefully the better I’ll be as president.

At Get Religion, Terry Mattingly sees these comments as proof of Obama “outing himself” as a perfectly ordinary liberal Protestant Christian. I’m not quite sure Obama was closeted, or if claiming his faith as his inspiration for equality and good fatherhood is exactly akin to coming out. Especially since only the minority media sites that care about religion are picking up on it. But let’s not dismiss it either.

I’m particularly taken by Mattingly’s journalistic aim in this debate: “ The goal is to find coverage that takes the president’s statement seriously as a faith statement, not as an act of political chess.” Are faith statements and politiking mutually exclusive? Because last I checked, God seems to love presidential elections. The democratic party cannot deny the fact that conservatives have made same-sex marriage into one of the most prolific moral issues in our country. How could Obama endorse same-sex marriage and deny its loaded religious meanings? A justification of rights, in our blessed Christian nation, must come from a religious base. And let’s not forget, we didn’t elect a self-described secular, we elected a nice Christian boy.

Director Nabeel Abdel Messeeh works on his film with his Egyptian interviewees-turned-actors. Still from The Virgin, the Copts and Me. Source: (c) Oweda Films.

By Abhimanyu Das

Namir Abdel Messeeh’s highly entertaining documentary The Virgin, the Copts and Me is a curious beast, a bit like one of those clever New Yorker articles that start off making you think it’ll be about Batman but end up being about the tax obligations of the 1%. Only, in this case, it’s not entirely clear whether the thematic sleight-of-hand was artistic choice or just lucky accident. Either way, this narrative slipperiness is both what’s interesting and troublesome about this frustrating picture, easy to like but difficult to recommend.

The saga begins with the French-Egyptian filmmaker (the family emigrated to France in 1973), sitting down with his family to watch a fuzzy videotape of an alleged sighting of the Virgin Mary. Further discussion reveals that this is one of a spate of such sightings, experienced mostly by the oft-persecuted Christian Coptic community in Egypt. Interestingly, a few Muslims had claimed to experience these holy visions as well. This curious cultural hook is all Messeeh – a secular skeptic – needs to decide on making a documentary about the phenomenon.

The film’s tendency toward distracting self-referentialism is already front-and-center. Messeeh spends a chunk of time ‘documenting’ his attempts to find a financier and win his family over to the project’s cause. All this is done with great comic flair. We get an early introduction to the most memorable character in the film – his domineering mother Siham who continually expresses doubts about her son’s ability to pull this off. Unfortunately, much of this feels staged. It seems unlikely that Messeeh happened to have an HD camera running at a family gathering during which he is hit by a perfectly blocked creative epiphany. The film is full of what look to be staged scenes, contrived narrative setups and pre-arranged dialogue, raising the question (unintentionally, in my view) of whether this is a documentary at all. Messeeh is in every scene, an unapologetic puppet-master. At every turn, the developments feel arranged as opposed to observed.

Eventually, Messeeh does find a financier – who becomes an additional comic device via his increasingly angry voicemails – and sets off to Cairo. Once he arrives, however, he discovers that the prospects for success on the basis of his vague premise are remote. He finds few eyewitnesses to the phenomenon. Those who do come forward fail to yield much useful insight. Church patriarchs refuse to cooperate. Even his attempt to advertise in a Cairo paper, asking for eyewitnesses, is botched by a cellphone-challenged assistant who hangs up on all the callers. This first half of the film essentially becomes an amusing fish-out-of-water scenario, following the bemused Messeeh as he wanders around Cairo, searching for a subject. Unsurprisingly, entertaining though it might be, it yields little religious or sociopolitical insight.

At this point, the film takes a sharp left turn as Messeeh – out of desperation – decides to visit his extended family in the remote Egyptian village from which his mother hails. Here we get some tantalizing hints of insight about class-consciousness and the uneasy relationship that often arises between immigrant and homeland. Siham forbids Messeeh to film her family, clearly made uncomfortable by the prospect of an international audience scrutinizing where she comes from or whom she grew up with. These insights are quickly buried, mined for comedy value (the Tribeca audience laughed uproariously at Siham’s threats to sue her own son for filming his country cousins).

Messeeh goes ahead and films his extended family anyway in what proves to be the more interesting (yet thornier) half of the documentary. All pretense of this being a project about faith in religious phenomena is thrown to the winds. Suddenly, we’re watching a slice-of-life travelogue starring his rural relatives, an affectionate look at day-to-day existence in an Egyptian village. To this end, Messeeh is actually successful. This is not a frequently documented group of people. Their excitement at being filmed is palpable in every frame and their willingness to bare their souls to the interloper touching yet troublesome. It was a little discomfiting sitting with the director in an air-conditioned Tribeca Film Festival screening room while his cousins muse sadly onscreen about the hand-to-mouth misery of farm life. Still, there are rewards to be gleaned from this material. For a while, Messeeh drops his postmodern, comic remove and lets his connection with his subjects take over. There is real feeling in the scenes where Messeeh, his aunt and toothless old grandmother while away evenings together or when the cousins work the fields, proudly exhibiting their skills to the camera. Messeeh the self-proclaimed agnostic was never really interested in religion. His real preoccupation is with community. The film comes alive in a more believable fashion once he discovers that this is what he really wants to talk about.

Sadly, he strays back into the territory of manufactured drama and farce. His French producer leaves him a few amusingly irritable voicemails, pulling funding and expressing chagrin about this no longer being a marketable project about religious tensions. High and dry, the desperate Messeeh turns to the obvious replacement producer – his mother. An experienced accountant, she drums up some funding, draws up a new budget and flies to the village to help him figure out how to finish this film. The scheme they hatch remains borderline inexplicable to me, days after the screening. They decide to film a reconstructed manifestation of the Virgin Mary, using a cast drawn from the villagers. The meta-layers are enough to induce a seizure. This has already been – among many other things – a film about its own making. At this point, it becomes a film about the making of a film about the making of a film. If that makes sense.

This feels like a completely different movie, along the lines of numerous narrative features about the riotous circus of film production (State and Main, Be Kind Rewind…take your pick). As always, Messeeh mines numerous laughs from the fraught casting process, the makeshift pre-production and the one-day shoot. One can’t help but pick up on the infectious joy of the villagers as they prance through what is clearly a welcome diversion from the routine of their lives. They practice theatrically exaggerated reactions to ‘the Virgin Mary’, steal electricity from nearby cables to help power the lights, gasp with delight at the green-screen process that plays out on the director’s Macbook. The villagers’ awed reaction to the screening of the final product, as they see themselves onscreen, generates a definite bittersweet emotion. In a final twist, it becomes a film about the allure of cinema; as the villagers look reverentially up at the screen, it is hard not to equate the act of watching a film with the act of worship. It’s Giuseppe Tornatore via Morgan Spurlock.

But, then, what is this film about? In the prologue, his producer criticizes Messeeh for creating a project that is too sprawling – “Is it about the Copts, the Virgin or you?” (a joke that sets up the title). Tragically, Messeeh never really figures it out. Every time he wanders into potentially interesting material – socioeconomic facts of life, rural existence, the plight of women in a religious society – he quickly shoehorns it into the audience-baiting framework of comedy or easy sentimentality. There’s little discipline in the construction of the film and no coherent, overarching theme or thesis. Messeeh’s bull-headed co-opting of the villagers to his cause is not exactly laudable. It sets up the final emotional moment of the villagers reacting to the re-enactment, but has already undermined itself through its lack of verisimilitude.

Ultimately, Messeeh, having won his poor cousins over with the magic of Mac-based special effects, gets to tour Europe and the United States with a film tailor-made for Western audiences. But what has he actually offered the community that opened its home to him? Or, really, to those aforementioned audiences? Throughout, The Virgin, The Copts and Me promises to paint a vivid picture of an Egyptian community that rarely (if ever) gets media attention. Infuriatingly, the director never trusts the material enough to keep from cutting to the next gimmick. I wish he had put more faith in his subjects and less in meta-textual trickery.

Watch clips from the film here. “The Virgin, the Copts and Me” will next screen at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2012–look out for further screenings in the coming year.

Abhimanyu Das is a freelance journalist and NYU graduate student, working out of Kolkata and the United States. He writes about film, TV and comics and watches at least one movie a day.

With support from the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs.

Despite this shift toward marriage equality in the broader U.S. culture, during its quadrennial General Conference that ended on May 4, 2012, the United Methodist Church (UMC) voted 39% to 61% against changing long-contested language in the church’s Book of Discipline that calls homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching.” In addition, they defeated a petition that would acknowledge that faithful United Methodists disagree on the role of LGBT people in the church.

However, as reported by David Weekley, the only openly transgender clergy person serving in a UMC congregation, they were unsuccessful in adding transgender people to their “incompatible” list. Hence transgender clergy can serve in the UMC assuming that like Weekley, they are married to someone of the opposite sex. However, the UMC did not support Weekley’s petition for a study of gender identity, nor did they address other issues relating to LGBT persons such as same sex marriage and the ordination of non-celibate LGBT clergy persons.

During the convention, the Common Witness Coalition held a number of events to challenge all forms of exclusion. During the last day of the conference, when the petition to change the Book of Disciple was voted down, Candace Chellew-Hodge noted at Religion Dispatches   that “when the conference reconvened after a break, those who supported the petition remained in the hall, singing as business began again. The presiding bishop, Michael Coyner of the Indiana Conference, shut down the meeting, calling the LGBT advocates a “security concern.” According to an email press release sent by the Common Witness Coalition, “Leaders of the demonstration were told that the legislation was postponed to avoid more harm to LGBT people and their supporters.”

In The New York Times, Laurie Goodstein observed that American membership in the UMC, the largest mainline Protestant denomination in the United States, declined to about 7.8 million while its membership abroad has grown to about 4.4 million, mostly in Africa and the Philippines, where homosexuality is not accepted. She added that about 40 percent of this year’s nearly 1,000 delegates are from outside the United States—an increase of more than 10 percent from their 2008 conference.

At present, it remains unclear how many pro-LGBT voices will remain with the UMC in the hopes of enacting change at their 2016 General Conference and who will choose to leave over this issue. While the UMC continues its ban on granting equal rights to LGBT individuals, other mainline denominations including the United Church of Christ (UCC), Episcopal, Lutheran (ELCA) and Presbyterian (PCUSA) have made strides toward full inclusion of LGBT people. Religion Link’s guide to same-sex marriage charts the various denominational stances on LGBT rites, as well as the forthcoming legislation around the subject of marriage equality.

Launched just last week, Religion & Politics is the most recent creation of the John C. Danforth Center, which opened in the fall of 2010. The center is funded by the Danforth Foundation, named after John C. Danforth, the former United States Senator from Missouri, ordained Episcopal priest, and author of Faith and Politics: How the ‘Moral Values’ Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together. The center features lectures, conferences, academic courses, and symposia all dedicated to the meeting of religion and politics. So far the center’s reach is somewhat local, though given the online medium through which the new magazine operates, we can only imagine how much further its conversations will travel.

We at The Revealer are particularly interested in publications dedicated to knowledge production that bridge the spheres of academia and news reporting. A nuanced understanding and committed curiosity to the way religion operates at social and political levels is one of the key goals of our journalistic project. Hence, we look forward to more of the already provocative and prolific pieces on the journal’s website. Perusing through some of the sub-headings, including bioethics, civil liberties, foreign policy, science, and sexuality and gender, one finds a diversity of controversial and salient topics ranging from Jon Stewart’s religious teachings to a roundtable-like discussion about the fairness of pundits’ obsession over presidential candidates’ religion.

On his Post-Dispatch blog, “Keep the Faith,” Tim Townsend spreads the good news of the publication where he interviews Griffith, among other contributors. Townsend notes that the center chose board members for the publication’s advisory board who are academics comfortable with the media, “either because their bylines appear there, or because reporters frequently hunt them down for quotes.” Such academics include Princeton Professor Robert Wuthnow, Mark Noll of Notre Dame, and Melissa Harris-Perry of Tulane University, known for her political news show on MSNBC. Townsend also gleans from contributors, like former editor of Time magazine, Amy Sullivan, that the birth the journal came at a crucial time in U.S. politics.

Indeed, the balanced perspective and tone of the magazine is what Griffith hopes will make it fruitful in our current political and cultural climate. As she poignantly notes in her editor’s note,

There is, or ought to be, a vast difference in our politics between stating one’s personal affiliation and manipulating religion into a blunt political tool. There is also a great difference between rapid-fire punditry and slower, deeper reflection on the long and complicated relationship between religion and US politics. The latter is the task we have set for ourselves. We look forward to hearing what you think.

We throw our yarmulkes off to you, Religion & Politics!