Tag Archives: religion
Author Saeed Jones on Empathy, the Power of Memoir, and Growing up Gay in North Texas
“My mission has always been to help people understand that we are never alone in the world.”
Saeed Jones possesses the rare ability to see himself with uncompromising clarity. He also has the courage to put his insights down on paper, chronicling the sh...Read More
‘My Congregation Trusts Women’: Progressive Faith Groups Counter Anti-Abortion Narratives
Conservative Texas groups and lawmakers have cited their faith to back abortion restrictions, but polling shows that majorities across many religions actually support abortion rights.
On a scorching afternoon in mid-July, clergy members gathered outside a small unmarked building tucked away in a business complex in North Austin. They filed in...Read More
In NO God We Trust?
An atheist seminar in Fort Worth drew a capacity crowd, evidence that Texas’ growing nonreligious population is finding its political voice here in the Bible Belt.
The protester’s T-shirt read “REPENT or PERISH”; his sign said, “There are no atheists in HELL.” He and a few other fundamentalists were gathered at t...Read More
Shelter Director Ruben Garcia on How Struggling Nonprofits Carry the Load of the Migrant ‘Crisis’
The director of El Paso's Annunciation House has brought compassion to the front lines of migration for four decades.
Ruben Garcia, 70, is a man with the weight of the world — or at least the hemisphere — on his shoulders. The longtime director of Annunciation House, a migr...Read More
‘We Got Nothing:’ Few Wins for the Christian Right in the 86th Texas Legislature
Though Christian conservatives chalked up a few narrow victories in this year’s session, they may have run up against the limits of their legislative power.
A quiet surprise of the 86th Legislature was the failure of many of the Christian right’s priorities. While lawmakers closely aligned with religious conservat...Read More
Texas Republicans’ Push for a Religious ‘License to Discriminate’ is Depressingly Familiar
Today’s targets of religious discrimination are members of the LGBTQ community. Not long ago they were African Americans and women.
One of the landmark constitutional questions of our day is being fought at the Texas Capitol: Does the right to religious freedom give people license to discr...Read More
‘Hurdle’ Is a Gritty Tale of Hope and Survival
The new documentary intimately captures the pressure, pain and aspirations of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.
On May 2, 2017, crowds of Israelis flow through East Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter, clad in blue and white to celebrate the country’s 69th independence day. Th...Read More
‘When I Spoke in Tongues’ Chronicles a Long Walk Away from the Church
For readers who’ve wrestled with their religious upbringing, Jessica Wilbanks evokes a powerful sense of loss: the loss of the person she used to be, and of the person she might have become, had she stayed inside the fold.
On a research trip to Nigeria, Houston writer Jessica Wilbanks fills out a questionnaire after attending a Pentecostal church service. The form asks a series of...Read More
A New Pray-the-Gay-Away Drama Suggests Conversion is Possible (Just Not the Kind You Think)
Poignant awards-season fare, Boy Erased makes the case against the Christian “cure” for homosexuality.
What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? That, more or less, is the question asked by the new Joel Edgerton-directed film Boy Erased, w...Read More
