Read a Sept. 29, 2010, column at Religion Dispatches by Candace Chellew-Hodge, founder and editor of Whosoever: An Online Magazine for GLBT Christians. Chellew-Hodge criticizes a campaign by Focus on the Family against anti-bullying legislation.

Read an Oct. 1, 2010, entry on the Reconciling Ministries Network blog suggesting that an anti-gay climate in society creates bullies and is fueled by church policies that call homosexuality incompatible with Christian values. It’s written by the Rev. Troy Plummer, executive director of the network, which mobilizes United Methodists to transform their church and the world […]

Read an Oct. 4, 2010 column by the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, R. Albert Mohler in which Mohler reiterates support for the Christian position against gay rights but strongly questions the harsh approach of many Christians to gay people.

Focus on the Family recently launched True Tolerance, which aims to give Christians resources for responding to “homosexual advocacy” in schools. See a report on True Tolerance.

Art Farnsley  directed the research of the Project on Religion and Urban Culture at the Polis Center of Indiana University. He has extensively studied congregations and social services and is one of the authors of Sacred Circles, Public Squares: The Multicentering of American Religion (Indiana University Press, 2004). His most recent work is “Flea Market Jesus,” on […]

Anne M. Hallum chairs the political science department of Stetson University in DeLand, Fla. A specialist in religion and politics, she has written about the anti-poverty dynamic of religion.

Sociologist John Bartkowski at Mississippi State University has studied faith-based poverty relief in Mississippi. He co-authored Charitable Choices: Religion, Race, and Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era (New York University Press, 2003).

Bishop E. Roy Riley of the New Jersey Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America testified about welfare reform July 19, 2006, before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. He expressed concern about persistent poverty and a growing gap between rich and poor in America.

Terence J. Fay is a lecturer on the History of Religion at the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada. He is an expert on the history of Catholicism.