Religion Dispatches
…rades to the site—an enhanced reading experience, better integration with social media, peace on earth. (We’ll be updating via our newsletter, here.) It’s our birthday, but it’s you who deserve the party (and the gluten-free, kosher, vegan, cruelty-free cake). Thank you for reading, for writing, and for your thoughtful and dynamic engagement with the ever-evolving question of religion in public life and culture. Yours, The Eds. …
Read More…onfusion now dogs the debate over employers’ First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and the new insurance mandates under the Affordable Care Act, which include birth control. The argument that seems to be winning in court is that employers who oppose the use of birth control for religious reasons should not have to provide it to their workers. Only in a world in which labor has been alienated from production, however, can such an…
Read More…ting to believe that insular religious societies are treated by some as a “free pass” from engaging in good journalism. And the line between news, documentary, docudrama, and entertainment is frequently blurred beyond recognition. Reality shows such as TLC’s “Breaking Amish” on and the Discovery Channel’s “Amish Mafia” are scripted sensationalism, total fabrications of authentic Amish life. “Amish Mafia” gives the impression that it represents hi…
Read More…nimum wage laws unconstitutional and claims to be a constitutional purist — pay Moffitt for his constitutional, uh, expertise? In the lawsuit against UNC, Moffitt and his co-plaintiffs alleged that the assignment of the Sells text violated both the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment — charging that UNC, a public institution, was not only unconstitutionally promoting Islam by assigning the text but inhibiting non-Muslims…
Read More…apply to their sons, only to their daughters. That their sons should have free rein to let “boys be boys” or to “sow their wild oats” went hand-in-hand with the idea that chaste girls wouldn’t have to worry about such boys because their own sexual experimentation would be heavily policed. So the so-called “son panic” is really anger that their sons are no longer free to do whatever they want and get away with it—as long as they “do it” to the rig…
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…the West, book burning has come to symbolize the totalitarian rejection of free expression—a desire to enforce conformity of thought. While there is no doubt that something like this is going on with Terry Jones and his church (not to mention Phelps), there is another symbolic meaning that is more ancient and, I suspect, more instructive. I have in mind the symbolism of making burnt offerings to supernatural powers. Rene Girard is a philosopher wh…
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Along with freedom of religion, freedom of the press stands as one of the five fundamental freedoms in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. But what is the free press, as an institution, supposed to do? Theorists of democracy generally put forth the free press as a cornerstone of civil society. Media outlets inform readers on matters of public interest, sometimes exposing malfeasance and corruption in business or government. They also prov…
Read More…uity, women’s autonomy in reproductive health choices, and the right to be free from religious discrimination in the public sphere. The fact that McConnell readily agreed to participate in Mohler’s “issues forums,” even while he and Grimes were negotiating the terms of their debates, certainly raises the specter of political collusion. McConnell is on record saying that he wants Lincoln-Douglas style debates—no questions from the media or the publ…
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…ents but whose accountability to the larger church is nil. Hey, afternoons free for drinks and a little action, I bet there’s no trouble finding applicants for these jobs. Second, who pays for this kind of busy work? This nuncio is reported to have had a “stately residence and access to a beach house.” I suppose it gets a little lonely rattling around the mansion, and God knows what went on in the beach house. But mostly this is one of those Catho…
Read More…ouch says this: We at Christianity Today believe Christians are absolutely free to use marijuana (where legalized). And, when it comes to pot in our particular cultural context, we think it would be foolish to use that freedom. For the CT editors, the moral quality of marijuana use seems to depend entirely upon the “cultural context” in which it occurs. And since our particular context is not conducive to marijuana use, marijuana use would be “foo…
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