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‘Religious Freedom’: Constitutional Principle or Electoral Politics?

By Frances Kissling

…w on contraceptive insurance, but also to assert without scrutiny that any number of health services violate its religious beliefs. In her interview with Kaiser Health News, Sr. Keehan acknowledged that the CHA still has “some very real concerns in the Church that even if you get rid of the coverage of contraceptives, [there may be] problems in the future.” Up to now, the administration has followed a strategy that is political, but respectful of…

Despising the Holidays: When Christians Led the ‘War on Christmas’

By Ed Simon

…five shilling fine. The contemporary Christian Right often claims that the New England Puritans are their intellectual ancestors, but this is willfully misreading the historical record as surely as creationists misread biological evidence. Contemporary American fundamentalism, from its pre-millennial dispensationalist eschatology to its free-market economic ideology is at odds with the actual ideology of American Puritanism. The reductionist ‘cult…

The Mistaken Assumption Behind Employers’ “Right” to Not Cover Contraception

By Mary Barker

…onfusion now dogs the debate over employers’ First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and the new insurance mandates under the Affordable Care Act, which include birth control. The argument that seems to be winning in court is that employers who oppose the use of birth control for religious reasons should not have to provide it to their workers. Only in a world in which labor has been alienated from production, however, can such an…

Soy Story: Atrocious ‘Reporting’ on Insular Religious Groups

By Eli Federman and James Moxness

…insular religious societies like the Amish or Hasidic Jews may be due to a number of issues, from the difficulty of contacting individuals for interviews to the fact that insular communities are less likely to challenge a story. Or, just as likely, it may be due to biases about obscure religious customs and practices that predispose outsiders—which journalists and TV producers almost always are—to be less critical about the information they receiv…

How “Gratitude” Underwrites Inequality, Power, and Exclusion

By Eric C. Miller

…le was emphatic that Christianity was the one thing standing in the way of free market capitalism taking over the United States and ruining the morals of the citizens. He saw Christianity as providing a check on market logics. There have been times when certain forms of Christianity—that of the Transcendentalists in the 1830s and 40s, for instance—exhibited the potential for a gospel of debt forgiveness to stand in opposition to the free market. B…

How Far Will White Christians Go to Maintain Power? An Interview with Robert Jones

By Peter Laarman

…hristians have merely been paying lip service to democratic principles and free elections, or whether they really believe in those principles and norms now that white Christians have become a demographic minority. This is all quite new—this reality of not being a majority white Christian country. We’ve gone from 54% white Christian to just 44% since Obama was first elected, or a drop of about 1% per year. Previous generations of white Christians h…

American Brokenness: A Lament

By Daniel Schultz

…ers; and to welcome them with open arms into the shared project of finding freedom, justice, and power together. That, as I always say, does not mean surrendering core principles or compromising them away. The truth, after all, is the truth. But I would love to see a sign at the next health care town hall meeting declaring WE SHARE YOUR PAIN AND WE NEED YOUR HELP. I would love to see Barney Frank or any other Congressperson say to a protester, “I…

“I Had No Intention to Write Atheistically”: Darwin, God, and the 2500-Year History of the Debate

By Edward J. Larson

…of European social thinkers from Ernst Haeckel to Karl Marx. Materialism knew no ideological bounds. From the right wing of the political spectrum, for example, the widely read mid-nineteenth-century English social philosopher Herbert Spencer, already an evolutionist, freely worked Darwinian materialism into his progressivist philosophy of social development, which was dubbed Social Darwinism by its critics. Haeckel carried these ideas to the Ger…

What’s Behind a Conservative Mormon’s Call For “Religious Freedom” Advocates to “Stand Down” on LGBT Rights

By Sunnivie Brydum

…ucial key to understanding Mero’s perception of LGBT rights and “religious freedom.” As a Mormon, Mero is predisposed to view religious freedom as a shield to defend the outsider, because that foundational principle has proved crucial to his church’s survival. To hear Mero tell it, modern religious freedom issues can be broken down into three concentric rings: the outermost ring is occupied by the institutional church, and concerns itself with wha…

The “Religious Freedom” President is Gutting the Rest of the 1st Amendment

By Sunnivie Brydum

…of the others. The new administration has launched aggressive attacks on a free and fair press, freedom of speech, and the right of the citizenry to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. One could even argue that he’s weakened the free expression of religion (or lack thereof), particularly as it refers to contraception, LGBT rights, and any non-Christian faith practices. Take the freedom of the press and the r…