Religion Dispatches
…upstaged lately by a politicized notion of “religious liberty.” Christian Freedom refers to the Apostle Paul’s distinction between things that are permissible and things that are helpful. Saved by grace, Christians are free to explore all things. But some things have harmful effects, and should therefore be avoided. Marijuana, the CT editors believe, is distinctly unhelpful. So to be specific, Crouch says this: We at Christianity Today believe Ch…
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…abeled bigoted and narrow-minded. Yet many clamor to deny Muslins the very free exercise rights for which Sekulow, and now also his son Jordan, litigated, with the ACLJ leading the fight against the nonexistent effort by Muslims to take over America by implementing Sharia. We’re seeing the rhetoric around “religious freedom” as Christian privilege, the denial of which is framed as persecution from the Trump Administration—but there are at least tw…
Read More…on between church and state. The bishops would love to have the separation between church and state we thought we enjoyed just a few months ago, when we were free to run Catholic institutions in conformity with the demands of the Catholic faith, when the government couldn’t tell us which of our ministries are Catholic and which not, when the law protected rather than crushed conscience. The state is making itself into a church. Oh, to be able to p…
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…e about the biography of groups or the nation; nostalgia lies in the plane between the personal and the collective memory. In this light MAGA was the perfect slogan for a figure like Donald Trump. Comments from a Proud Boys Chat Group on Telegram Using language and memes that promote the idea of the degeneration of the nation at the hands of feminism or gender rights, nationalists are positioned as the opposition to progress and create a stigmatiz…
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…ared his own account of becoming “perhaps, maybe the First Indian American Republican” following a private meeting with Ronald Reagan in 1979, explained the endorsement: “Trump is a businessman and is aligned with our ‘4Fs,’ [Free Enterprise, Fiscal Discipline, Family Values, and Firm Stand Against Terrorism (or “Firm Foreign Policy” as listed on the RHC website)].” Confronted with the reality that most Hindu Americans vote Democrat, Kumar suggest…
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…marry a partner regardless of sex (Obergefell v. Hodges), the right to be free from compulsory sterilization (Skinner v. Oklahoma), and the right to be free from government-mandated surgery (Winston v. Lee). One only needs to look around the world to see what the ADF has planned next for the United States, which includes dismantling other civil rights of marginalized populations. While evangelicals wait with bated breath for the end of Roe, they…
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…f online content, a number of news articles did manage to connect the dots between Ferguson and the discriminatory housing policies put in place after World War II. As I have argued before, new technologies tend to augment existing systems of privilege. Yet there is reason to hope that digital media may yet catalyze a more just future. Dear Prudence Before jumping from his capsule, with all eyes watching, Baumgartner remarked, “Sometimes you have…
Read More…possibilities. Mohler’s goal may be to rally sluggish evangelicals to vote Republican in November. Both McConnell and Mohler are on edge these days. McConnell’s continued status as a state senator is obviously questionable. Mohler has also taken some hits to his supremacist agenda recently and his status among Southern Baptists may be coming into question. Recently a second Kentucky Baptist College acted to free itself from Kentucky Baptists’ (i.e…
Read More…a dormitory and besides going to class and a small part time job, I was a free bird. In Ramadan a free bird, flies high on the rituals of the month. I stood for 20 units or tarawih every night that I was fasting. Like the first time reading through the Qu’ran in Arabic on my own this was exhilarating. Somewhere around 12 or 14 units, I lost track of everything outside of the recitation and the ritual performance—the zone. It was even more intense…
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The systematic abuse of the free exercise clause strikes again. In this latest episode, according to bloggers at Hot Air and the American Conservative, “[t]he Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled that a priest must testify in a case about what he heard in a confessional,” and “Fr. Bayhi will have to go to jail to protect the seal of the confessional.” These pundits can, to some extent, be forgiven for these misleading statements since the Catholic C…
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