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A Religion Scholar Gets It Wrong on Indiana’s RFRA

By Danny Fisher

…rying members and staff of the American Civil Liberties Union, the nonpartisan organization that exists exclusively to “defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” The ACLU often tries to resolve the same tensions between religious freedoms and civil rights that Prothero alludes to. In this instance, the organization, which has a long and imp…

No Bible-as-State-Book for Tennessee as Legislators Suffer “Symbol Fatigue”

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…legislatures of seven states — Alabama, Florida, Maine, Missouri, Oregan, Texas, and Wyoming — decided they needed state birds thanks to the efforts of progressive women’s clubs and their connection to the Audubon Society. And so it went, until recent years, when legislatures have begun to experience symbol fatigue. Part of it may have to do with how state symbol initiatives have become handy ways of introducing school children to the political p…

What Republicans Mean When They Compare Climate Change to Religion

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

Last week, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal comparing climate change to religion. Smith argues that the “facts alone,” and not preordained ideological commitments, should inform U.S. climate policy. We need “open debate and critical thinking,” says Smith, which are fundamental to the scientific process and democratic deliberation. Smith could…

Seventh-Day Adventists & Gay ‘Cures’; Legal Victory for Kenyan LGBTs; Political, Religious Leaders Spar on LGBT Issues in UK; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…m,” secretly videotaped his journey to Mecca on his iPhone and other small phones. “I was terrified because they reserve the death penalty for people like me,” Sharma said. Several times he had his equipment seized and video files deleted by authorities. But he persevered with both his spiritual journey and his film. “I was there making this pilgrimage for the thousands of gay Muslims who were too scared to go to Saudi Arabia, who would feel they…

Why Christian Fundamentalism Is Still a Big Deal in U.S. Politics, And How It Got That Way

By Eric C. Miller

When Texas Senator Ted Cruz announced his presidential candidacy this spring he urged conservative voters to claim their power—”I want to ask each of you to imagine, imagine millions of courageous conservatives, all across America, rising up together to say in unison ‘we demand our liberty.’” This rhetorical move, in which conservative Christians are cast as both oppressed minority and a latent majority, is a timeworn trope. But recognizing this…

Did the Duggars’ Fundamentalism Cause Sexual Abuse? Not So Fast

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ly.) One of my favorite informal fallacies to teach students is called the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. The story goes that a fellow shot a bunch of times at the side of an old barn, then painted bullseyes around each bullet hole and proclaimed himself a marksman. The marksman’s folly is easy to see in the story, but a bit more difficult to recognize in real life when we come across things that seem to happen more than chance should allow… such as…

Sorry, National Review: “Religious Freedom” Bills Do Permit Bigotry

By Sunnivie Brydum

…facts are particularly laughable in the face of the outright falsehoods Desanctis offers in response. Most immediately and demonstrably, Desanctis implies that “religious freedom” bills and the executive order are concerned only with marriage. And while the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges did directly deal with marriage equality (tossing a single sentence in Justice Kennedy’s masterful opinion to the anti-equality concerns of…

On the 20th Anniversary of Waco

By Kate Blanchard

…ary of the fiery massacre of David Koresh and 80 of his followers in Waco, Texas. Surviving Branch Davidians still await their leader’s resurrection and return. It’s also the 47th anniversary of Haile Selassie’s only visit to Jamaica, which Rastafarians who saw the Ethiopian leader as a messiah continue to celebrate as Grounation (or Groundation) Day. Such stories make me wonder about some people’s attraction to living charismatic leaders. As som…

What Muslim Ban? A Religious Liberty Hearing in the Trump Era

By Elizabeth Reiner Platt

…ncluding helping Syrian refugees, protecting the environment, or providing sanctuary to undocumented immigrants. None of this is to understate the continued relevance of anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice religious exemptions. Legislators have promised to re-introduce—and the President has promised to sign—the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), which would sanction religiously-motivated discrimination against same-sex couples and unmarried pregnant and p…

Trump’s Nominee to Fill RBG’s Seat Is Unfit. By Definition.

By Andrew L. Seidel

…started, we’ll wait to the next election.” We are in the middle of a partisan election right now. Election Day may be 43 days away, but many people, including myself, have already voted. In a new poll, Americans agreed that the seat should not be filled until after the election, including half of all Republicans. By taking part in a dishonest Republican power grab, the would-be justice admits that they are partisan and corruptible, not impartial…