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As Tensions Escalate in the Balkans, the West Could Hand Putin a Valuable Weapon

By Katherine Kelaidis

…at its formation. I’m not yet 40 years old and I have great-grandparents (one of whom I knew as a young child) who were born and spent their lives into early adulthood in the Ottoman Empire. In fact, I can easily think of more than a dozen people I’ve known who were born under Ottoman rule, some of whom died only recently. The Ottoman occupation of majority Orthodox Christian populations and historical Orthodox Christian territory is, in most case…

UPDATED: Oklahoma Personhood Bill Not Dead…

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…rom Oklahomans for Life began circulating a discharge petition: a bit of maneuvering which, if signed by enough legislators, would have forced a floor vote over the objections of the Speaker and Floor Leader. Well, how well do you think that endeared the bill’s supporters to the party leadership? I suppose one has to consider the possibility that Speaker Steele and Floor Leader Dewitt are superhuman in their charity. Perhaps Speaker Steele was utt…

Trump’s “Muslim Ban” A Gift to Terrorists

By Ali Olomi

…n’t include Muslim-majority countries where [the] Trump Organization has done business or pursued potential deals.” There’s no evidence of any Syrian refugee committing a single act of terror in the United States, nor have there been any Iranian or Iraqi terrorists. Donald Trump’s list of banned nations is comprised of nothing more than the most vulnerable of Muslim countries, six of whom we’ve bombed or used in proxy wars. Like all bullies, he ha…

Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…sorta how James Ray set up his spiritual Ponzi scheme, right? He knew someone who knew someone who did “Indian sweats” and presto and voilà, Ray is taking people on spiritual retreats at 10K a head and then people start dying. So, experts have to be brought in to figure out what happened. No Indians mind you, just experts. And the truth is, we don’t want to be experts. Why? Because we know there is no such thing as Indians, redskins, warriors, bra…

Trump is a Nightmare, Sure, But Can He Actually Do Anything?

By Sunnivie Brydum

…rve as checks and balances. Vanita Gupta, the former acting assistant attorney general who led the Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights from 2014 until this past January, stressed that agency guidance—like the DOJ’s religious freedom memos issued earlier this month—cannot unilaterally change existing law, only clarify it. “The guidances don’t articulate new law,” Gupta explained. But such guidance is intended to inform policy-making, and…

3 Reasons Catholic Bishops Are Holding Their Tongues on GOP Health Care Debacle

By Patricia Miller

…he bishops’ real objection to the contraceptive mandate was that it threatened to enshrine contraception as an essential health benefit, which was a direct threat to the Catholic Church’s promotion of natural family planning. As Archbishop William Lori, head of the USCCB Religious Liberty Committee recently told Crux, preventive services should only “pertain to preventing diseases and not to … preventing birth.” But, as New York Times reports, und…

A Post-Christian America? Not Quite—Though Devoutly to be Wished

By Peter Laarman

…ful composition of the advisory panel to Obama’s Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Kissling wrote, aptly, that “junk religion”— conservative Christianity in particular—is extremely well represented on the panel. Moreover, she makes this important observation: …under the Bush administration the views of Council members on these issues were largely irrelevant. President Obama has made these views important as a substantial part of…

Does God Want Jeremy Lin to Win?

By Jay Michaelson

…n) community as a whole, which currently views him as a hero. Can you imagine the pressure? And yet, so far at least, neither Tebow nor Lin has fallen. No crashed cars at three a.m., no extramarital affairs, no steroids. I can’t help but think that their Christian faith has helped them cope with their sudden fame. They have strong ethical values. Each day, they pause to remember that no matter how important they are, they are not the most importan…

Amway, Religious Right Pyramid Scheme, Returns to the Motherland

By Bill Berkowitz

…’s questioning of Colson’s fitness for a PCM, wrote: “Oh, please. Hope you never need redemption.” How are we to understand the concept of redemption? Of the five definitions in the American Heritage Dictionary, three are economically related: the paying of an obligation (government bond); the recovery of something pawned or mortgaged; the “deliverance upon payment of ransom.” The final definition is “salvation from sin through Christ’s sacrifice….

Dispatches from the Workplace: Postville: Ground Zero for the Intersection of Immigrant and Workers’ Rights

By Kim Bobo

…s complained that the supervisors yelled at them, sometimes hit them, and one worker complained of a supervisor blindfolding him with duct tape and then hitting him with a meat hook. Local religious leaders scrambled to provide support and assistance to immigrant families. Jewish activists expressed their outrage by organizing a boycott of Agriprocessors, Inc. Within a few weeks, hundreds of rabbis and Jewish organizations signed a letter condemni…