Religion Dispatches
…ally the inaccurate descriptor. After all, Arizona already has a Religious Freedom Restoration Act; SB 1062’s supporters even described it as a way of closing that statute’s alleged “loopholes.” What’s more, since Arizona, unlike its neighbor New Mexico, doesn’t recognize sexual orientation as a protected class in its anti-discrimination laws, all the photographers and bakers and everyone else in Arizona were already perfectly free to turn LGBT pe…
Read More…lowed suit, and both schools continue to reject federal money to this day. Free to run their organizations as they see fit, they are also free from government dependence. Even if you disagree on the particulars, you have to respect the consistency. These days, there is reason for skepticism whenever “religious liberty” clamors to the fore. Researchers have found, unsurprisingly, that frames touting liberties and rights serve as rhetorical veils, a…
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…aeli scholars said that, in this case, they cared less or not at all about freedom of speech. Former SBL President Athalya Brenner wrote that: “At this time I’m less concerned than usual about freedom of expression, future job prospects of younger colleagues, and so on..[F]reedom of verbal expression does not and should not extend to hate speech and violence. Out of self defense, this is not the company i want to keep.” Noam, the aforementioned Ta…
Read More…the Manhattan Declaration, which appears as a blueprint for the “religious freedom” wars, and in the opposition to the HHS contraception benefit requirement, and in opposition to the jurisprudentially accepted understanding of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses. Chaput has made his views clear in other venues. In 2004, he suggested that because abortion was a “foundational” issue, there was only one way a faithful Catholic could vote. In…
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…stitute, a Christian Nationalist legal outfit bent on redefining religious freedom under the First Amendment. The Institute’s goal is to morph the hallowed protection for religious freedom, the shield, into a tool to impose that religion on others, a weapon. The coach and the Institute aren’t seeking religious freedom, but religious privilege. They don’t want equal treatment (nobody else is allowed on the field to pray), but special treatment for…
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…to act pursuant to one’s religion is not. The conversation about religious freedom in Indiana has revealed confusion about not only this point, but also the very significant differences between the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and SB 101 and other states’ RFRAs. They have both similarities and profound dissimilarities, and these have not been well articulated, especially by the news media. As the Center for American Progress notes: [T…
Read More…ntonin Scalia presented the 7-2 ruling as a defense of free speech and the free circulation of ideas. That’s been a consistent theme for the Roberts court, which in recent years has in the name of freedom of speech legalized the sale of animal torture videos and struck down limits on corporate political spending on the grounds that corporations have free speech rights too. But in his dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer asked, “What sense do…
Read More…mplication is that explicitly nonreligious servicemen and servicewomen are free to consult with a religious chaplain. But for the same reason that a Christian may prefer a Christian chaplain over a Muslim or Jewish chaplain, nonreligious people should be free to seek out assistance from a member of their own community. As a Humanist chaplain, I frequently hear a version of Perkins’ argument (For more on what exactly I do as a chaplain, check out a…
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…ised to them by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978), and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993). This case has precedent working against them, however. In Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, the U.S. Supreme Court declared constitutional a plan to build a road and log trees in the High Country in Northern California, an area sacred to the Yurok, Karuk, and Tolow…
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…me from dancing with the one I love but my mind holds the key set my body free, set my spirit free… And a symphonic explosion of sound highlights the climax to “Intervention”: Been working for the church while your life falls apart been singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart The Wilderness Downtown When Neon Bible was released in 2007, lead vocalist and songwriter Win Butler, who has spoken about his Mormon upbringing and religious influe…
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