Religion Dispatches
…report on the survey, noted that this finding demonstrates the bind facing Republicans who want to broaden the party’s electoral coalition. De-emphasizing social issues and pushing conservative economic policies would bring with it some danger to Republicans’ electoral coalition. As one questioner noted, that puts Dionne in rare agreement with conservative religious leaders like Tony Perkins who are always warning GOP leaders not to abandon social…
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…n’t overturn any public health laws for other First Amendment rights, like free assembly and free speech. The religion of the justices also seems to play a decisive role in these decisions. According to the abstract of one study, for example: The Roberts Court has ruled in favor of religious organizations far more frequently than its predecessors—over 81% of the time, compared to about 50% for all previous eras since 1953. In most of these cases,…
Read More…as opposed to the attack on Planned Parenthood, even though he considers himself pro-life. But the anti-poverty Christian groups like Sojourners and Faith in Public Life have been silent about the Republican assault on reproductive freedom, particularly of poor women. When you wave a Bible in someone’s face, just remember that someone can wave one in yours, too….
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…of traditional accounts of atonement is of the way those accounts tend to promote suffering as something that’s inherently redemptive—and to valorize submission and obedience in a way that is obviously destructive when it’s applied unjustly to women. They include accounts of women who were abused by men who justified their actions by saying that in order to be Christ-like, women need to be submissive. The way I tried to chart a way past this—and…
Read More…opic: “We are Catholics. If someone wants to make another church, they are free to do so.” I think what he meant was, we men are the Catholics in charge and women who want to participate equally are free to form their own church. I can assure him on good authority that the process of forming new models of church is well underway with Catholic women serving the needs of the world. I can also brief him on the fact that some of the nuns with whom he…
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…d were saddened and disturbed by Mister Rogers’s apparent unwillingness to free Shamu from the confines of the Sea World tank. The letters are very touching in the care they express for a killer whale in need of the freedom afforded by a vast ocean. They are also moving in the sense that they are the product of Rogers’s own creation—his handwork in encouraging children to express their feelings, including those of anger and disappointment. The let…
Read More…legal team. Future plans involve legally ordaining ministers and using the free exercise clause to claim privileges for Satanists. Satanic ministers could, for example, illegally marry a gay couple and then, when the state refuses to recognize the marriage, claim that their free exercise rights have been violated. Other projects involve the Satanic ideal that one’s body is sacred and inviolable. Expressing disgust that corporal punishment is still…
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…legitimately weaponized and used to harm less powerful people? Sure. I’m a freelance writer and a trans woman with no trust fund to my name, and this is something I unfortunately know from personal experience. But it’s a leap to conclude from the inappropriate weaponization of “cancel culture” that all opinions deserve access to all platforms. Nor is this a reason to stick our heads in the sand, ostrich-like, and ignore the very real ways in which…
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…lines we’ve imposed on the Middle East—of secularists versus Islamists, of free-thinking liberals versus religious autocrats, and so on. That view misses the bigger and potentially bloodier point. Democracy’s Dark Side In America, we’re accustomed to believing democracy and diversity go hand in hand—we are obviously pluralistic. But that’s because we assimilate different individuals to a single national identity. Canada’s challenge with Quebecois…
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…hat is political, but respectful of the constitutional limits on religious freedom. It has correctly taken the position that public policies established to serve the common good require a clear and narrow definition of what is and what is not a religion. We do not just abandon the common good to unexamined claims that a public health or education provider is required by faith not to comply. We are prepared to give an actual religion an almost fre…
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