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House Health Care Bill Discriminates Against Religious Freedom

By Gordon D. Newby

…ice common in the Middle East and Central Asia, ensoulment takes place 120 days after conception. Up to that point, abortion is allowed for good cause. This is true of the Shafi’i Muslims of Southeast Asia and East Africa. For the Malikis in North Africa and the Hanbalis of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, ensoulment occurs at day 40, with abortions allowed up to that time. On the basis of Qur’an 2:233, which states that the mother should not be mad…

OK Woman Politely Declines to Thank the Lord; Atheists Unite

By Becky Garrison

…he wasn’t a sheep. Vitsmun will be remembered—at least in the atheist moment—as the moment when the world has to face the fact we’re not this tiny percentage of people. I don’t think the numbers are growing. I think the numbers are now being counted right. Atheists aren’t afraid anymore to speak out.” But what will Wolf do next time?…

Conservatives Accuse Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of Misconduct

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ng awarding property from a church in Connecticut to the Episcopal Church. Days before the AAF released the full text of its ecclesiastical complaint, the U.S. Supreme Court again denied an appeal from a breakaway congregation in Falls Church, Virginia. Hard feelings, much? The complaint, which includes six specific charges against Jefferts Schori, moves beyond property disputes to include alleged violations of Episcopal canon law related to finan…

God’s Obituary: A Humanist Response to Mass Murder

By Anthony B. Pinn

…tances that lead to such destruction. To be sure, there were calls in the days after December 14 for this deep and meaningful silence. But what bothered me were the attempts to find space for a loving God in the context of this misery. I don’t mean the ridiculous and easily dismissed attempt to use this tragedy as a call for prayer in schools, or as a justification for reintroducing the Bible and removing secular approaches to human history. No,…

“Little Sisters” Being Sold As Face of Contraception Case

By Patricia Miller

…do so out of deep love and religious conviction,” and that they “spend our days caring for, learning from, and serving those whom many in our society would prefer to forget.” So, apparently, if you want to turn a lot of poor, elderly people out on the street, you have to allow the Little Sisters to refuse to let their insurer provide contraceptives to their employees. The effort to make the Little Sisters the public face of the case has been so ex…

Why I’m Not Quite Sold on ‘Black Santa’

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…e said “There ain’t no Christmas kid” and I can’t get him back Back in the days, Christmas was deep My moms put presents under the tree while I played sleep And peeped ha! Santa Claus never gave me nuthin Seen them mad faces, lying and frontin So do some good to the ghetto, Mr. Chris Kringle Come and stay awhile, kick it with god’s angel Take and acknowledge my wisdom and understand That Santa Claus is a black man Word up While the goal of creatin…

Conservatives Have Officially Become the Catholic Church’s Tea Party

By Patricia Miller

As the much-ballyhooed family synod lurches into its final days, with no clear consensus on even the most mild of reforms suggested by Pope Francis and lots of backbiting and political posturing (one prelate even suggested that Satan was at work), it’s increasingly clear that Pope Francis has a problem: a recalcitrant, right-wing faction is holding his synod hostage to their vision of a conservative utopia. It looks more and more like Pope Franci…

Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…e wrong, I continue to be an avid reader (I’m all into short stories these days) and, of course, I wrote a book about films. I continue to have my students read words, but I’ve increasingly felt that these words must be put into dialogue with the fleshed-out realities of life. Films are arguably not “fleshed out” either, at least in their fictionalized guises, but they do register via audio-visual paths that are inaccessible to the experience of r…

Google Data Reveal Poor Have An Interest Above “Dark” Religion

By Peter Laarman

The estimable David Leonhardt made a media thing happen over the past few days with his Upshot report on what amounts to a NY Times anal exam of web searches, aided and abetted by the non-evildoers at Google. I was traveling when this mess broke, but it was still in front of me via NPR and lots of digital play. In case you missed it, the Times found that well-off people (residents of the “easiest places” in the U.S.) make mainly high-end, consume…

Gimme That Old Spice Religion

By Frederick Clarkson

…d pal of Chancey’s and a religious and political co-belligerent from their days on the staff of the Home School Legal Defense Association; he heads a Texas-based organization called Vision Forum, which produces and markets books and other materials for conservative Christian homeschoolers. But to describe Vision Forum as ‘conservative’ does not tell the half of it. Phillips is a follower of Christian Reconstructionism, a movement whose seminal fig…