Religion Dispatches
…at weird was, in fact, code for Mormon, and that Obama and team planned to use the word “weird” as a dog-whistle to stoke voters’ antipathies towards Mormonism in 2012. The news set off a wave of cringes among Mormon politicos as well. Because Mormons do recognize “weird” as a word that sticks to us in the American imagination. In 1995, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley declared in an interview with Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes, “We are not a…
Read More…ght legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom, claims “the future of religious freedom depends on a free pulpit to communicate fundamental, biblical principles to congregations across America” and urges pastors to “join a growing movement of bold pastors preaching Biblical Truth about candidates and elections from their pulpits.” In AU’s letter, executive director the Rev. Barry Lynn argues that “it would be detrimental for our country and the democra…
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…ffectively serve the purpose of integrating church and state and have been used to the detriment of free speech and cultural manifestations on a regular basis.” Unfortunately, a similar outcome in Russia does not seem unlikely. The law could certainly be applied unevenly. According to Shamil Kashaf’s recent presentation at the conference “The Varieties of Russian Modernity,” hosted by my employer, the Russian Presidential Academy of National Econo…
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…e and imprison members of religious minorities. While the government has paused its use of the death penalty since July 2016, the execution of convicted drug traffickers remains a signature policy of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. The government’s feeble claim of “Indonesian conditions” for rejecting solid recommendations from UN member countries to improve human rights will come as no comfort for LGBT people and religious minorities whose rights…
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…tright encouraged cadets to profile Black and Latino communities, they did use thinly veiled, coded language to do just that. In a tactical class at one academy, for example, instructors suggested that although cadets might not need to frisk a mother crossing the street with her kids, they should frisk a man wearing all red in the Southeastern part of the city (where most of the city’s Black and Latino population lived). Instructors often encourag…
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…lation of the European Convention on Human Rights, saying the law had been used to violate freedom of expression. The ruling was rejected by the Russian government; BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder notes that “Russia has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the ECHR’s authority in recent years, including adopting legislation in 2015 allowing for ECHR rulings to be ignored when they contradict the Russian Constitution.” More from Reuters: Pro-Kremlin politicians…
Read More…ls can’t exist at Patrick Henry College because the students sign an honor code,” Farris claimed. “[Homosexuals] could not sign our honor code,” Farris said, adding that he considers the actions of gay men and women “sinful.” “Part of the honor code is to be sexually pure,” he added. Baratko speaks to a couple of the bloggers, who say they were inspired by other blogs at conservative Christian colleges like Bob Jones University (BJUnity), and he a…
Read More…e original ruling by the judge stated that satire in its own right did not promote enmity between groups. In fact, satire of religious actions and beliefs right is a long tradition in India. The 11th century Kashmiri Sanskrit poet Kshemendra, in works such as Samaya Matrika, Kalavilasa, and Narmamala, satirizes brahminical and Buddhist norms with rapier wit. (Kshemendra, by the way, also wrote serious devotional and poetic works.) My colleagues in…
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…nd they haven’t done well financially. Churches that stick to orthodoxy do better over time because in part it’s only those churches that tend to create families that can be of size and carry on the Christian tradition. This harkens back to Dean Kelley’s 1972 book, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing, which argued that liberal denominations were losing a battle of ideas to stricter, more conservative communions. The new twist here is Eberstadt’s…
Read More…. But who is to decide what constitutes a “vice against nature”? The Portuguese legislators had been too coy to mention gay sex explicitly, and so a meaningless clause entered the statute books, which no court could act upon. This year, the Penal Code was rewritten. The new Penal Code sweeps away a great deal of the musty colonial legacy, including the mention of “vices against nature”. Now not even the most contorted of arguments could claim that…
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