In the “The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church,” Sarah McCammon, a national political correspondent for NPR, shares — with a sometimes visceral honesty — the everyday currency of childhood in an evangelical subculture in which the Bible was the ultimate authority.
Read More(OPINION) Two recent documentary series offer distressing portraits of Christian organizations that, although unrelated, appear eerily similar. Both movements gained prominence in part by instilling fear and shame in their members. Both have reaped abuse, scandal and decline.
Read More(OPINION) Haven’t bishops — in Illinois and across the U.S. — learned that despite the best efforts of their high-priced lawyers and public relations professionals, victims are becoming increasingly empowered, civil attorneys are becoming more aggressive and creative, law enforcement is becoming more determined, and those who commit and conceal assaults on children are becoming “outed” more and more?
Read MoreThe gangsterism style of rape dwindled when South Africa gained its freedom on April 27, 1994. Yet, rape is coming to a rise in a different dimension. Many homes are affected by fathers and brothers who are victimizing and raping their own wives, mothers, daughters and sisters. What is now appalling is the reported recurring incidents of rapes that women and children suffer at the hands of some of the clergy.
Read MoreA former employee of a $100 billion investment fund owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gave an interview on national TV program “60 Minutes” about his experience working at the Salt Lake City-based Ensign Peak Advisors Inc. and what drove him to file a whistleblower complaint with the IRS and other government entities.
Read More(OPINION) The future journalist was both shocked and inspired by her contact with Christians caught in that land's toxic climate of paramilitary warfare, drug trafficking and kidnappings. She struggled to grasp how someone like pilot Russell Martin Stendal, after years held for ransom, could forgive his kidnappers and then start a missionary effort to convert them.
Read MoreThe Securities and Exchange Commission announced Ensign Peak Advisers Inc. and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints agreed to pay $5 million in penalties to settle charges against the investment fund operating inside the nonprofit entity of the church.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Something akin to a Catholic “Trial of the Century” has gotten underway in Rome and there’s plenty of palace intrigue to go around. The trial involving corruption, bad real estate deals and financial wrongdoing has placed Pope Francis in the center of a controversy that for the first time doesn’t involve doctrine or theology.
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