Who did the honors: clergy, a justice of the peace or just a friend? More and more weddings are performed by someone ordained online.
Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images
In Southern Baptist history, rules on women and sexuality are often entwined. A scholar writes about the first congregation to be expelled from the SBC over LGBTQ+ issues
What should a marriage look like? Religious leaders’ ideas have shifted for centuries.
davidf/E+ via Getty Images
LDS leaders still stress that men should ‘preside’ over their families. But in recent years, messages about marriage have stressed more equal partnership.
Nuns from Taiwan pray in Taipei on May 8, 2011, in celebration of the Buddha’s birth anniversary.
Patrick Lin/AFP via Getty Images
Traditionally, Buddhism has been opposed to women taking on leadership roles. However, nuns in many Buddhist-majority countries are challenging the patriarchal rules.
Rabbi Diana Villa, center, with colleagues at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, in Jerusalem, in 2013.
AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner
A scholar of gender and US religious history explains how women are trying to make religious communities more inclusive. Women’s ordination is only one piece of this ongoing work.
Pope Francis with a group of nuns in Saint Peter’s Square, Vatican City, in 2018. History and the Bible provide good reasons why women should be in positions of authority in the Catholic Church.
Ettore Ferrari/EPA/AAP
A recent Vatican commission report on women’s ordination as deacons was inconclusive. But allowing women priests would help the Catholic Church achieve much-needed reform.
Pope Francis will not ordain women to priesthood.
L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo Via AP
The Catholic Church has historically been unwilling to extend full priesthood to women. However, Pope Francis could take the lead in ordaining women to become deacons, a scholar says.