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OK’s Anti-Gay Marriage Bill Would Change Weddings But not Marriage—Not Even Gay Ones

By William E. Smith

…bout this effort to eliminate the marriage license in Oklahoma. Along with Russ himself, however, many of these responses are confused, due to a lack of understanding of the nature and purpose of a marriage license. According to his official press release about the passage of HB 1125, Russ believes that eliminating state-issued marriage licenses will “get government out of marriage and resolve the same-sex marriage controversy.” Would ceasing to i…

Is Wheaton’s Decision to End Student Insurance a Religious Liberty Ruse?

By Patricia Miller

Wheaton College grabbed headlines last week for its decision to end student health insurance rather than comply with the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act. And by comply, I mean: tell the government that it refuses to provide contraception so it can instruct the evangelical school’s health insurer to do so. According to Wheaton, even notifying the government that it refuses to provide contraceptives would still violate its religiou…

How the “Little Sisters” Won by Losing “Religious Liberty” Case

By Patricia Miller

…ary Clinton to debate the nuns, adding, “I’ll stand with the nuns.” On Fox News and other right-wing media, “forcing nuns to provide abortion-inducing drugs” has become shorthand both for violations of religious liberty and government overreach in general. Before he was a GOP candidate, Mike Huckabee regularly referred to the persecution of the Little Sisters on his Fox show as one of the signs of the coming religious liberty apocalypse in which C…

U.S. Christianity is Dead, Long Live U.S. Christianity

By Richard Flory

…sity is greater that what the Pew numbers tell us. This may be bad or good news, depending on your perspective. Surprisingly, some religious leaders are trying to spin it in a positive direction. Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore said that the evangelical herd is essentially culling itself of “pretend Christians,” who are simply being more honest about their (lack of) beliefs. This is the same sentiment I’ve heard mainline denominational and c…

Mister Rogers’ Radical Pacifist Neighborhood

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…complexity. It also would have been contrary to his fierce commitment to truth-telling in constructive and positive ways. I understand that some readers will no doubt be troubled by some of the things they learn about Rogers. But if they could keep their own moral complexity in mind, perhaps that will make it easier on them. With that noted, though, I must say that in spite of his own shortcomings Rogers still seems to me to be far more saint tha…

Who Would the Buddha Bomb?

By Danny Fisher

…onastics taking up arms. (Of course, one need look no further than today’s headlines for evidence of brutality perpetrated by Buddhists: the humanitarian crisis involving Burma’s Rohingya minority has been purposely aggravated by the fanatical monk U Wirathu and his “969 Movement.”) In his book An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics, Peter Harvey chalks these seeming inconsistencies between Buddhist peacefulness in theory and practice up to “unresolve…

As a Latina Millennial I Have to Ask, Does the Catholic Church Stand a Chance?

By Fabiola Carrión

…of gender roles, sexual and reproductive health, and sexual expression is crucial to the millennial generation. Laudato si’, the pope’s encyclical on the environment, made global headlines because of its powerful stance against consumerism and its repercussions. Yet, the text falls short of fully resonating with young people’s concerns, resisting policies that protect “reproductive health” (in quotes in the manuscript). What Pope Francis and his C…

Religious Exemptions and the New Non-Culture Wars

By Sarah Posner

…objected to the rule, including the National Association of Evangelicals, World Relief, World Vision, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. In a letter, they protest that the interim final rule “falls short of adequately protecting existing and prospective grantees, contractors, subgrantees and subcontractors with religious or moral objections to providing, facilitating the provision of, providing information about, or referring o…

Hide the Religion, Feature the Science: 60 Minutes Drops the Ball on Mindfulness

By jeff wilson

…ext generation of exercise.” The mainstreaming of mindfulness is the real crux of the piece. Rather than using mindfulness to purify the mind as part of a celibate monastic exercise designed to sever the karmic cycle of rebirth and bring about nirvana (the original purpose of mindfulness), mindfulness is here applied to mundane worldly concerns, for achieving practical benefits that Americans feel they need. The piece begins by talking about how s…

Republicans To Get Free “Spiritual, Historical” Trips to Israel

By Sarah Posner

…ian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, “If the key to maintaining sustainable freedom is righteousness — the same virtue that produced freedom — what is the greatest threat to freedom? Unrighteousness. America has left God.” Lane also aims to persuade 1,000 pastors to run for political office. Lane has already taken Rand Paul to Israel, after which the Kentucky Republican said, “Absolutely we stand with Israel. What I think we should do is announ…