Religion Dispatches
…ional law and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in making the case that neither Free Exercise Clause nor RFRA require an exemption to preserve religious liberty. In addition to the religious organizations, today’s letter was signed by an array of civil rights and liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the NAACP….
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…c barrel, money rules our lives and guides our actions like no other force today. Unemployment, bailouts, national debt, foreclosures, bank regulation, layoffs, and entitlement programs—the list of economic concerns remains the same since the start of the financial crisis in 2008, but the upcoming social, cultural, and political battles over how best to deal with these concerns cuts straight to the heart of national identity—a point made dramatica…
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…new groups of people. You also make it more available to commodification. Today, a studio like MNDFL can insist that it’s a non-religious space, even as it draws on religious traditions. “The secularization is explicitly designed to make [mindfulness] more marketable,” said Jeff Wilson, a Buddhism scholar at Renison University College in Canada and the author of Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Cultur…
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…us Supreme Court called the restauranteur’s defense “patently frivolous.”) Today, there is a similar but not identical logic in some of the controversies on which I have previously reported, especially those of the baker who wouldn’t create a custom cake for a gay wedding and the foster care agency that refused to place children with a lesbian couple. The challenge today is how to distinguish between, on the one hand, attempts to license discrimin…
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…ghtmares. In somewhat the same way that climate change denialism functions today, the Atoms for Peace campaign merely divided public opinion, allowing some to sleep easy and the most knowledgeable people even more distraught and fearful. Events like the recent reactor meltdown in Northeastern Japan can bring even the sleepers back to the edge of anxiety, and then there’s the persistent fear that a nut job or a terrorist will decide to usher in apo…
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…ad human rights situation in Iran, the conditions are better than in Saudi Arabia.” He points to the status of women in today’s Iran. More than 60% of university students are women. And, unlike in Saudi Arabia, women in Iran drive. Kadivar delights in telling me that in the holy city of Qom, there are women cab drivers who specialize in taking families on excursions. But most of our conversation was about the murder of Rafiq Tagi. In an open lette…
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…of exchange” and “a symbol of a nation’s morality.” The Constitution Party promotes the North critique of the Federal Reserve System and calls for its elimination as well as a return to a hard money standard. The platform reads, “It is our intention that no system of ‘debt money’ shall be imposed on the people of these United States. We support a debt-free, interest-free money system.” Congressional Tea Partiers Vow to Challenge the Fed Ron Paul’s…
Read More…ay deem relevant”. The East African Court of Justice ruled in favor of the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS’ request to join as amicus a case being brought by the Human Rights Awareness & Promotion Forum against the Attorney General of Uganda seeking a ruling that the provisions of Uganda’s 2014 Anti-Homosexuality Act violate the Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community. Australia: Catholic Church in free-speech battle; offic…
Read MoreToday is my last official day for completing local business before departure. I’ve balanced my checkbook and paid all of my bills except the ones that are automatically paid (which is about the same as being paid, when the checking account from which they are drawn has been balanced). I’ve taken out cash for travel with the knowledge that using ATMs abroad is always a great way to get the best rates. Yep that’s right. The U.S. always considers it…
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…away from identifying and demanding the conditions that would qualify the United States as a social democracy and towards attempts at creating democratic and authentic experiences in their own lives.” That is, in the wake of political and social disappointments, activists of the New Left decided the best course of action was to Be the Change they wished to see in the world. Those inclinations still exist today. Political organizing through ordina…
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