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Park 51 and RLUIPA, Or, Conservatives Hoisted On Their Petard

By Daniel Schultz

…ge: 2000, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. So: “If the City of New York denies the zoning approval sought for this site, it will blatantly violate [the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act] and expose the city to one whopping lawsuit that is extremely likely to succeed,” as Chicago attorney Dan Lauber told Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet. “A federal law adopted by a Republican Congress makes the denial th…

Clash of the (Scottish Islamic) Tartans

By Amanullah De Sondy

…could wear the official Glasgow tartan (having been born and raised in the city), the University of Glasgow tartan (as a graduand), or I could just wear any Scottish tartan without reflecting upon detail. In the end I chose the Hebridean Heather for purely aesthetic reasons—it matched the color of my hood. (Officially it’s a heather color but some say it’s pink.) Tartans continue to fascinate me. The many colors that are woven into intricate clan…

Vigil Planned in Wake of Suicide by 17-Year-Old
Gay Mormon

By Joanna Brooks

…s donating the candles for the vigil. Organizer Marian Edmonds, pastor of City of Hope Church in Salt Lake City and organizer of the OUTReach resource center in Ogden, will staff a table at the event to recruit mentors to help work with LGBT young people to prevent suicide. And Mormons are volunteering to speak, including Bonnie Flint, an LDS mother and educator. “It is especially important that member of the LDS faith stand up against discrimin…

West Virginia Mayor Enlists Churches To Pray Away Drugs and Crime

By Sarah Posner

…on of law enforcement officers, and even for drug dealers. Huntington is a city of about 350,000 that sits near the state’s borders with Ohio and Kentucky. The local news coverage of Williams’ effort is notable for the absence of any discussion of the constitutional concerns raised by a mayor’s enlistment of explicitly Christian prayer as a “silver bullet” for a grave and challenging public safety and health problem. Williams, a Democrat, tells lo…

Lincoln, Clinton, and Trump: From Strategy to Spin to Straight-Up Bullshit

By Martin Jay

…gogue’s, but also of the statesman’s trade. In my book The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics, I analyze some of the many ways that mendacity can be wielded for good as well as ill, depending on to whom the truth is owed, what the politician’s intention is in withholding the truth, and what the consequences of withholding it might be. Politics is a realm of human endeavor that values plurality, takes opinion seriously, and knows the force…

Cooler than Thou: Will Hipsters Wreck Christianity?

By Nicole Greenfield

…en church and cool, individual and community, faith and rebellion, authenticity and imitation, truth and relevance. Jay Bakker’s Christian Star Power Jay Bakker, pastor of Revolution Church and son of famed televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye, is undoubtedly an icon of Christian hipsterdom. It’s not only that he sports full-sleeve tattoos and multiple piercings, that Revolution holds its weekly church services at a local bar, or that he’s been label…

Indulgences Are Back At Last!

By Kate Childs Graham

The Sixth World Meeting of Families will be held this week in Mexico City. The meeting, with the theme of “The family, teacher of human and Christian values,” organized by the pontifical council of the family, will bring together clergy and lay people from over 90 countries. The following message from Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, president of the pontifical council for the family, reveals the tenor of the conference: The family today must confront,…

Obama Shifts US Narrative Away from “Christian Nation”

By Michael J. Altman

…on. Beginning with the Puritan minister John Winthrop and his vision of a “city on a hill” in the New World, many Americans have found their identity and the identity of this country within the Christian Tradition. During the Revolution many Patriots enlisted Christianity as support for their cause. Similarly, abolitionists abhorred that slavery could occur in a Christian nation. And in the twentieth century, the Cold War rhetoric of the United St…

A Rabbinical View: Bringing Honor to God By Extending Equal Rights to Gays and Lesbians

By Justus N. Baird

…The Talmud teaches, “any person who is able to rebuke the citizens of his city [and refrains from doing so] is accountable for the misdeeds of the members of his city.” A famous rabbinic commentator, the Meiri, said of this passage, “One who does not protest is considered as if he himself did the act.” According to these teachings, all Jews have a responsibility to speak out against immorality and injustice. Now the rebuke. The article states tha…

Hundreds of Thousands Spent to Fight Gay Marriage While Poverty Grows

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…Service 501(c)(3) provision. Jackson’s efforts have been in vain. The D.C. City Council passed a measure to ensure marriage equality in the District, and it is expected to become law in March after a congressional review. That hasn’t stopped Jackson from trying, also in vain, to get the question of marriage equality on the ballot, spending more than $146,000 through three different committees. Whether it’s my hometown church and its new sanctuary,…