Leadingchurch.com

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/note-from-the-academic-christian-underground/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-alienation-the-benedict-option/

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/hope-and-the-historian/419961/

NYTimes

Slate

Nevertheless, gender-critical trans women clearly feel like they’re struggling against an ideological tide. A 28-year-old trans woman in Ohio with a gender-critical Tumblr—she asked me not to name it, lest it draw unwelcome attention to her—says she sees parallels between contemporary trans activism and her Christian fundamentalist upbringing. “It’s just this sense that there are certain things that are unquestionable, and you can’t even talk about them,” she says. “I guess a lot of belief systems have things that operate in that way, but there are just so many for trans activism and for fundamentalist Christians.”

The mainstream trans rights movement’s answer to this feeling of dissonance is to expand the boundaries of what woman means. “You can be whatever kind of woman you want to be,” Boylan says. “But what I don’t want is to take anything away from someone else, and I don’t want anyone else to take anything away from me. If your thing is saying that a transgender woman who has been through transition is not a real woman but some other kind of woman with an asterisk, then you are taking my womanhood away from me. I’m fine with people living their truth as they see it. But don’t ask other people to see me as something less than as I see myself.”

Missing

HT. Dreher

Click to access NCSIII_report_final.pdf

HT: Jesus Creed

Duke Study

What Are Our Most Important Observations?

• The number of congregations claiming no denominational affiliation increased from 18% in 1998 to 24% in 2012 .

• White mainline congregations, and the people in those congregations, are older than the congregations and people of other religious traditions .

• Most congregations are small but most people are in large congregations .

• People are increasingly concentrated in very large congregations . The average congregation is getting smaller, but the average churchgoer attends a larger congregation .

• People in smaller congregations give more money to their churches than do people in larger congregations .

• Worship services have become more informal and expressive .

• 10% of churchgoers worship in multi-site congregations .

• American solo or senior pastoral leaders are more ethnically diverse and older, but not more female, than they were in 1998 .

• Thirteen percent (13%) of congregations are led by volunteer senior or solo pastoral leaders .

• Assistant and associate ministers and specialized congregational staff constitute 42% of the full-time ministerial work force and three-quarters (74%) of the part-time ministerial work force.

• Compared to solo and senior pastoral leaders, secondary ministerial staff are more female, younger, less likely to be seminary educated, and more likely to have been hired from within the congregation .

• There is increasing ethnic diversity over time both among and within American congregations .

• Food assistance is by far the most common kind of social service activity pursued by congregations, with more than half (52%) of all congregations listing food assistance among their four most important social service programs .

• When congregations lobby elected officials or participate in demonstrations or marches, the issues they most commonly engage are poverty, abortion, and same-sex marriage .

• Acceptance of female lay leadership is very widespread, with 79% of congregations allowing women to hold any volunteer position a man can hold, and 86% allowing women to serve on the main governing board .

• Congregational acceptance of gays and lesbians as members and lay leaders increased substantially between 2006 and 2012, but acceptance levels vary widely across religious traditions

RNS