Free Republic

A coalition of more than 350 faith leaders endorsed Joe Biden for president this week, citing a need for “moral clarity” to “restore the soul of this nation.” “Faith 2020 is raising awareness, mobilizing faith-rooted voters to get out the vote and doing our part to restore the soul of the nation,” the group wrote on its website. “We’re a group of progressives, independents and conservatives seeking change.” Faith 2020 received endorsements from faith leaders of various religions — Christian, Jewish, Sikh, Muslim and others. Its list includes well-known names, such as Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran minister who founded the...

Nadia Bolz-Weber is ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), a fast declining liberal Mainline Protestant denomination. Heavily tattooed and often obscene, she’s different from typical Mainline clerics. Formerly pastor of a small Denver church she founded, she’s a fairly popular writer and speaker. Wikipedia calls her a “public theologian.” Ostensibly her vulgarity makes her more authentic. Perhaps she was being authentic when she recently tweeted to her 93,000 followers a pic of her middle finger aimed at a metro Denver bakery, declaring: “My 12-step program is next door to Masterpiece Cake Shop (of anti-gay fame) so as...

...Unfortunately, the pastor who talked up the liberation that comes from admitting you’re in the wrong now seems more interested in helping people understand why they don’t need to. In her new book, Shameless: A Sexual Reformation, Bolz-Weber is out to set Christians free from the angst and humiliation churches have often foisted on them because of their sexual proclivities and behaviors. But the way the book goes about doing so is by rejecting wholesale the idea of “sexual purity” and, with it, the need to confess sexual transgression....

AUSTIN — Nadia Bolz-Weber bounds into the University United Methodist Church sanctuary like a superhero from Planet Alternative Christian. Her 6-foot-1 frame is plastered with tattoos, her arms are sculpted by competitive weightlifting and, to show it all off, this pastor is wearing a tight tank top and jeans. Looking out at the hundreds of people crowded into the pews to hear her present the gospel of Jesus Christ, she sees: Dockers and blazers. Sensible shoes. Grandmothers and soccer moms. Nary a facial piercing. To Bolz-Weber’s bafflement, this is now her congregation: mainstream America. These are the people who put...