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Court Rules Religiously-Based Restrictions in HHS Contracts with Bishops Violate Establishment Clause

…n the sincerity of the USCCB’s position that the restriction it imposed on its subcontractors on the use of TVPA funds for abortion and contraceptive services was motivated by deeply held religious beliefs.” In other words, the Free Exercise Clause does, of course, protect one’s expression of deeply held religious beliefs. But the Establishment Clause prohibits the government from favoring particular religious beliefs, no matter how deeply held th…

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Studies Confirm: Your Steak is Possessed by Demons

…he philosopher believed that animal meat is infested with evil demons that use sacrificial meals as a conduit to corrupt the human body. Once inside the body, Porphyry asserts, these demons use the human digestive system to glut their appetites, emitting harmful gasses as they digest the meat. The telltale sign of demonic infection is uncomfortable bloating, flatulence, and belching. For Porphyry, then, burps at the dinner table weren’t just viola…

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Unmasking the “Veiled Prophet” Behind a 135-Year-Old St. Louis Tradition

…oseph or an analysis of both affect and argument in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, on the St. Louis University campus. Such juxtaposition points to the ultimate use of the Arch City Religion Project as, itself, a kind of lens, a tool through which citizens—scholars and students as well as congregants, laypeople, policy makers, even parade-goers—can see the familiar in a new light. Drawing attention to that which is so…

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Do the Arguments Against Bathroom Equality Hold Water?

…“aborted a much-needed public debate over whether identity-based bathroom use can and should be regulated as a legal right, or merely left as an option.” But despite the fact that Schuck professes to believe transgender equality is a noble cause, he unnecessarily belittles and trivializes the position transgender kids are in, saying the “only value in play here is transgender people’s desire to affirm their gender identity during their few minute…

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No, Sunni and Shia Muslims Have Not Been Fighting Forever

…n civil discourse. Is dying because America needs to keep its allies happy better than dying because you’re in the wrong religion, or pray in the wrong way? I don’t know, but I don’t imagine it makes all that difference. I imagine it wouldn’t to you, either, if your loved ones were being killed, oppressed, dispossessed and so on and so forth. That our victims are largely Muslim is important, but not central to these conflicts. At least, not to us….

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Religion as a Front for Tyranny: A Roundtable on the Timeliness of Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”

…, agency and voice. The Handmaid’s Tale series feels so relevant today because it focuses on the experiences of a woman living under an oppressive regime. When reproductive rights activists in Texas and Missouri staged protests wearing handmaid’s costumes, it was a chilling statement that the Gilead regime does not seem far-fetched but frighteningly familiar. Patricia Miller: I think it’s important to note that Atwood said she didn’t put anything…

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The ‘Charlie Charlie Challenge’ and Teenage Yearning for Supernatural Encounters

…arlie as a demon appears only to make him more appealing. Ellis notes that use of the Ouija board has a structure similar to exorcism, in which an entity is called forth, named, questioned, and then dismissed. The Charlie Charlie challenge eschews some of these elements because the conjured entity is already identified and the game/ritual does not allow for open-ended responses. And yet the ritualistic opening and closing remain. Players emphasize…

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Teaching Love: Soulforce Takes it to the Quad

…bed for “sexual sins” in the college handbook. Does Crook see a connection between the worldview promoted at Central Baptist and the violence and rejection LGBT people often face? “There’s a lot of talk about religious bigotry,” he says. “About Christians hating other people for the way they act. I don’t think that’s true. We don’t hate them—we love them like we love anybody else. We just happen to disagree with them. That gets turned around into…

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In His ‘Forgiveness Day’ Sermon — a Slightly More Sophisticated ‘GloboHomo’ Rant — Kirill Lays Out an Authoritarian Vision in Which His Version of God Might Dominate and Rule the Human Race

…tique of freedom, suggesting that the people of Donbas rightly opposed the freedom of western civilization because it brought with it a test of faithfulness to God—i.e. pride parades (это гей-парад). By not giving in to this sin, Kirill argues that Donbas (and seemingly Russia as well) are thus strangers to the world (то они не входят в тот мир, они становятся для него чужими.), not welcome in the West because of their oppositional stances on prid…

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Bob McDonnell’s Christian Reconstructionist Thesis

…hile taxation not explicitly endorsed in the Bible is seen as “theft,” the use of tax support and tax supported institutions to promote “biblical families” (among—and at the expense of—those of us who don’t believe in their God, their Bible, or their views of family) is based solely in this circular argument that God has ordained it thus. I am sympathetic to the fact that people’s views change over time (in fact suspicious of people whose views se…

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