The end of election season has various commentators reflecting on what the vote for Barack Obama (and against the Republican Party) means for women. At Jezebel, Erin Gloria Ryan signaled a kind of defeat in the “war on women” by assessing the losses suffered by “team rape”; in USA Today, Amanda Marcotte charged that Republicans lost the culture war by, among other things, ignoring women’s reproductive rights; and Hanna Rosin, writing for CNN, was less convinced that this vote meant anything historic for... Read more

As the bishops gather in Baltimore this week for their annual meeting, they like everyone else in the country will be talking about last week’s election. The U.S. Catholic bishops took a beating at the polls. Not only was President Obama reelected, despite their attacks on him, the bishops also lost on state referendums on same-sex marriage. Like all Americans, the bishops have a constitutional right to participate in the political process. They can debate the issues, criticize candidates and... Read more

More than 60 autumns ago, a young Atlantan named Martin Luther King Jr. arrived to start graduate school at Boston University. There, he fell under the influence of a theologian, Howard Thurman, who taught him about Gandhian nonviolence. That concept became one of Dr. King’s guiding principles in the civil rights movement.On a brilliant fall morning this Sunday, a torch of black Christianity was passed to another minister, scholar and son of Atlanta, who was born five years after Dr.... Read more

by Darlene Kelley R3 Blogger Is local church diversity possible? Quite a while back I had the experience of joining the staff of a local church as the only African American staff member. During the interview process the church mentioned a desire to become a diverse congregation where everyone was welcome to come. However as I spent time on staff I would soon discover many challenges that accompanied this plan. Now that I have recovered from the experience of being there,... Read more

Not all Evangelicals are Right-leaning Republicans. But according to polls 73 percent are. That’s the folks I’m talking about here. No one sane disputes the fact that the base of the base of the Republican Party — post Roe V Wade and with a big “assist” from my late Religious Right leader father Francis Schaeffer and me (before I changed my mind) — is evangelical voters. No one sane disputes the fact that the Republican Party is funded these days mainly by a handful of billionaires with a vested... Read more

by R3 blogger Edward Blum and Paul Harvey Did you ever hear the one about Jesus being Mexican? Well, he was bilingual; he was constantly harassed by the government; and his first name was Jesus. Or, perhaps Jesus was Irish? He loved a good story; he never kept a steady job; and his last request was for a drink. Or maybe it’s possible that Jesus was Californian? He never cut his hair; he was always walking around barefoot; and he started a... Read more

Christian conservatives, for more than two decades a pivotal force in American politics, are grappling with Election Day results that repudiated their influence and suggested that the cultural tide — especially on gay issues — has shifted against them. They are reeling not only from the loss of the presidency, but from what many of them see as a rejection of their agenda. They lost fights against same-sex marriage in all four states where it was on the ballot, and... Read more

Mitt Romney failed in his bid to win the White House back for Republicans, but the biggest losers in Tuesday’s voting may be Christian conservatives who put everything they had into denying President Obama a second term and battling other threats to their agenda. Instead of the promised victories, the religious right encountered defeat at almost every turn. Not only did Obama win convincingly, but Democrats held onto the Senate — and the power to confirm judges — and Wisconsin... Read more

One of the most interesting findings about our electorate this election cycle is the growing number of people identifying as religiously unaffiliated or “Nones”. In October, the Pew Research Center identified that “Nones” were on the rise with one-in-five adults polled indicating that they had no religious affiliation. The trend toward religious disaffiliation was particularly pronounced in my age bracket – “the Millennials” – with one third identifying as such. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life While a significant group of... Read more

http://dgjigvacl6ipj.cloudfront.net/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf Watch Election 2012: Religion and the Results on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Read more