Search for "VIPREG2024 1xbet free promo code today Egypt"

Is Accreditation of Religious Institutions a “Farce”?

By Eric C. Miller

…oard of overstepping the First Amendment and infringing on their rights to free religious exercise and free speech.” Among the colleges and seminaries that spurn regional accreditation, many justify their decision by citing freedom from governmental oversight, a position compatible with the conservative mentality often dominant at such institutions. Ideologically consistent, this claim has the ancillary benefit of helping its makers dodge the cost…

The Sacred and the Dead: How an Iranian-Jewish Angeleno Discovered Her Tribe

By Saba Soomekh

…found my “people” and my sense of belonging. It was the most thrilling and freeing experience of my high school life. The dancing, the moving, the drums, the parking lot scene where along with veggie burritos, beautiful beaded jewelry, and other crafts, I found a real sense of community. If music can be an intoxicant, then American Beauty was my gateway drug. It introduced me to other Dead albums and I devoured each one. Eventually I found my fell…

Opposition To DADT Repeal And The High Rate Of Evangelical Chaplains

By Sarah Posner

…avention of their own religious beliefs, they are required to support the “free exercise of religion” of all servicemembers and their families, and enter service with the knowledge that they will serve “a religiously diverse population.” In any case, if there is disproportionate opposition to repeal among chaplains, it’s a trend that was created by the effort to recruit evangelical chaplains who opposed open service by gays and lesbians. If it’s u…

Archbishop of Chicago Accuses Emanuel of McCarthyism Over Chick-fil-A

By Sarah Posner

…ionally impossible to grant same-sex marriage rights and protect religious freedom. But then George does some more verbal gymnastics to try to claim that granting equal rights to gay and lesbian couples somehow constitutes an imposition of “state religion” on religious opponents of same-sex marriage—a bizarre formulation of the Establishment Clause. He concludes: Surely we can find a way not to play off newly invented individual rights to “marriag…

A Meditation on Shopping and Desire

By Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

…g meals or the “click, click, click” of the computer mouse in response to “free shipping!” “40 % off!” or “Buy one get one free!” in the United States, we are gluttonous consumers of material goods (and food, but that is a whole other subject). The value and consequences of shopping in dominant US culture puts the consumer on a roller-coaster ride. One year we are told that excessive, unwise spending and its resultant debt have led our country int…

The Religious “Right” to Denounce Homosexuality

By Sarah Posner

…long line which have gradually morphed church-state separation cases into free speech cases — for Christians, that is. In other words, whereas courts used to determine whether religious action (such as use of public school resources for a Bible club) would constitute government endorsement of religion, religious right legal advocacy has altered the jurisprudence to evaluate such questions based on whether the school’s exclusion of the Bible club…

Walt Whitman’s Sacred Democracy

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…mocracy” as the work of the 20th century, and that task continues unabated today. He warned that there was only one thing that really threatened to undo it: party-thinking. But these savage, wolfish parties alarm me. Owning no law but their own, more and more combative, less and less tolerant of the idea of ensemble and of equal brotherhood, the perfect equality of the States, the ever-overarching American ideas, it behooves you to convey yoursel…

We Can’t Have Religious Freedom Without Reproductive Freedom

By Frederick Clarkson and Cari Jackson

…eedom that made democracy possible are the root of what makes reproductive freedom possible today. The rollback of religious freedom that the sponsors of the Virginia Statute warned us about is well underway. We can see it in the recent and likely future decisions of the Supreme Court, the damage done by the Trump administration, and in the theocratic agenda of the Christian Right, a movement that continues to grow in political power. But their da…

Are Religious Leaders Prepared to Engage “Religious Liberty” Questions Post-Hobby Lobby?

By Carolyn Davis

…ders need to help their congregations tell the story of American religious freedom, both its successes and its failures. Celebrate the ways religious liberty provides the crucial bulwark that allows for pluralism of belief and experience: offer special worship services, sermons, education programs, and social media outreach efforts that critically engage the tensions between freedom and liberty in religious practice and American citizenship; take…

Romania’s “Witch Tax”: Magic Meets Bureaucracy

By Joseph Laycock

…nials for her craft. A National Center of Witchcraft? Witches adapted to a free market quickly. Emerging businesses sought their aide, creating a growing clientele for witchcraft. In 1997, there was an attempt to form a “witches’ union,” in part to counter the claims of dozens of upstart witches that they were descendants of Mama Omida. In 1999, there was even a plan to build a thirty-five room “national center of witchcraft” on the outskirts of…