David Gibson

Lost amid the ongoing furor over President Trump’s travel ban and the ecstasy (and agony) over his first pick for the Supreme Court was another move on Tuesday (Jan. 31) that is starting to give social conservatives pause: Trump’s continuance of the executive order by President Obama’s policy that protects gay and transgender employees from discrimination while working for federal contractors.

For much of its long history in the U.S., the Catholic Church was known as the champion of the working class, a community of immigrants whose leaders were steadfast in support of organized labor and economic justice – a faith-based agenda that helped provide a path to success for its largely working-class flock.

whether it is the ugly language and behavior often displayed by Republican candidate Donald Trump, or some other factor, U.S. voters — especially those same evangelicals — appear to have vanquished their inner Puritan and are now far more accepting of sinning politicians.

As terror attacks by ISIS extremists have proliferated, many in the West have demanded that Muslims do more to denounce radicalized Islam – and with protests and sermons and theological arguments, average Muslims, imams and scholars and have done that more than is often realized.

Since the late 1970s, the political battle lines in the culture war have been clearly drawn and easily understood.

Numerous delegates and activists who take their cues from their faith complained that party leaders have effectively dropped faith-based participants from the process of drafting the party platform or helping to shape the campaign message for nominee Hillary Clinton.

When Pope Francis said this week that the church should ask forgiveness from gay people for the way it has treated them, he sparked yet another round of global headlines about how his unpredictable papacy is changing Catholicism.