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The Incredible Shrinking Free Exercise Clause

…elevant, which is why the Westboro Church case will be decided strictly on free speech grounds and not as a free exercise case.  Smith was immediately unpopular and congressional efforts to overturn it by statute met with limited success, leaving federal government actions that substantially burden religious practice subject to the compelling state interest test, but state and local laws exempt. The funeral privacy interest in Snyder is a generall…

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Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

…uested so-called “kosher” phones. The idea is to offer conservative Jews a phone that is free of “corrupting influences” of the sort that are already avoided by ultra-orthodox Jews through a ban on television and some radio. Reuters reported in February 2008 that Bezeq Israel Telecom launched a new “kosher” landline phone service, which will block calls to porn and other “improper” destinations for these conservative groups. The same sentiment app…

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Putting the “Protest” Back in Protestant: Reclaiming the Spirit of Resistance

…a. Pause for Intermission: A Few Common Threads So if “Protestants” are so free-spirited and come in so many surprising varieties, are there any unifying themes? I have already suggested some common threads, but here is a working list of shared core commitments among those possessed of an essentially Protestant disposition: • A very strong sense that government needs to stay out of religious affairs; for the integrity of each sphere, but particula…

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Episcopal Church Assault Data Reveals the Dark Side of Inclusive Christianity

…a random sample size and therefore isn’t statistically representative. The number of individuals reporting victimization in Episcopal spaces is alarming nonetheless. However, I would argue the data is more likely to under- than to overestimate the scope of the abuse that occurs. To see why, the survey results must be interpreted in light of the Episcopal Church’s larger culture of inaction around sexual violence. See no evil, hear no evil… LGBTQ+…

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Why We Won’t Let Jonestown (Or 9/11 or Sandy Hook) Die

…e story of a small group coming to grips with a mass cultural trauma. As a number of notable sociologists put forth in their book Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (University of California Press, 2004), society, to put it simply, can experience trauma like an individual can. As with the individual, there are a few things that make a society more vulnerable to trauma. “A society emerging from a major war, suffering from diminished economic r…

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Power Up: Turn Off the Cell Phone

…plugged-in lifestyle doesn’t really get at the heart of the issue. I think the Amish, of all people, have it right. It’s not so much about what you as an individual are doing or not doing, as the effect technology has on the community: Why not make life easier and just put [a phone] in the house? “What would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a tel…

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Religious Affiliation, ‘Mankind’: India’s Anti-Corruption Activist Leads Second Freedom Struggle

…good move. When I got to the lobby another something told me to dig out my phone and check it for messages. Sure enough, I had one from an unfamiliar number. A woman’s voice said Bedi was still sleeping, exhausted from the previous day’s overseas flight, and needed to reschedule our interview for that afternoon. I called the number back, convinced the opportunity was lost. “I’m here at the hotel now, but I’m booked solid this afternoon—” “Hold on,…

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Free Arabs: Satire, Disobedience, and Disclaimers

…ve of an overbearing and despotic political structure. In keeping with the spirit of the Arab Spring, Free Arabs, therefore, proclaims an emancipated form of political and cultural citizenship. The site’s heavy reliance on art and satire to deliver its pungent critique of Islamist politics, cultural norms, and oppressive regimes indicates an emerging form of aesthetic disobedience which seeks aggressively to compete with dominant narratives of Ara…

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Gay Black Church: An Interview with Bishop Yvette Flunder

…oing the same thing. Because the spontaneity of the Spirit in allowing the Spirit to move freely, and in and through your body, in and through your mind, with songs. The free-style worship, the celebration, the movement away from the bulletin, the program. You have a gospel background. It was right after I met you that I was reading Kalefa Sanneh’s New Yorker article in which you talked about how church choirs have always been the province of LGBT…

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We Went Through Amoris Laetitia Section by Section So You Wouldn’t Have To

…eteronormative uncontracepted sex in monogamous marriage.” Sections 243 and 299 would also disappoint any divorced and remarried Catholics who want to receive Communion openly. Pope Francis says they should be treated with care and kindness and respect, but he stops short of giving them access to receiving Communion. He offers the same condescension to LGBT Catholics in Section 250 when he says should be treated with care, kindness and respect, bu…

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