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Democratic Egypt Tests a Divided Israel

By Shaul Magid

…to democracy. And yet, in Israel democracy still rules, the press is still free, the courts still function, and human rights is still a value in principle—if not always in practice. Part of the belief in democracy is that it is by nature a moderating force (one can even see this with Hezbollah in Lebanon). We cannot support democratic change contingent on what democracy will bring; even if it may not serve our interests in the short run, it’s stil…

American Infidel: Robert Ingersoll Was the “Great Agnostic” of the (Last) Gilded Age

By Peter Laarman

…aphy recently published: The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought. Secularism and feminism have been Jacoby’s own primary themes, making her Ingersoll’s ideal biographer. Jacoby is unabashed in her admiration for her subject, and she has every reason to be a fan of someone who lived an entirely admirable life. Born in 1833, Ingersoll grew up poor, as his dad, an unsuccessful Presbyterian minister, lurched from one failed pasto…

Romania’s “Witch Tax”: Magic Meets Bureaucracy

By Joseph Laycock

…nials for her craft. A National Center of Witchcraft? Witches adapted to a free market quickly. Emerging businesses sought their aide, creating a growing clientele for witchcraft. In 1997, there was an attempt to form a “witches’ union,” in part to counter the claims of dozens of upstart witches that they were descendants of Mama Omida. In 1999, there was even a plan to build a thirty-five room “national center of witchcraft” on the outskirts of…

We Can’t Have Religious Freedom Without Reproductive Freedom

By Frederick Clarkson and Cari Jackson

…under the First Amendment. We think it’s time for us all to seek religious freedom for reproductive freedom, and to recognize that persistent efforts to interfere in reproductive decisions is “an infringement of a natural right” in the sense the Virginia Statute warned. Of course, women didn’t share in this natural right at the time—but the right to believe differently than the rich and the powerful as codified in the Statute and the First Amendme…

The Problem with the Notion of “Closely-Held Corporations” in Hobby Lobby

By Kara Loewentheil

…, not a religious rights issue, but it gets to one of the complications of free exercise rights. Some areas of law operate vertically, let’s say, since they’re mostly self-referential and one can acquire expertise in them without much reference to other areas of law. But religious rights work horizontally, as they come into interaction, and conflict, with many other categories of law. And it’s impossible to be expert in all types of law, even for…

Walt Whitman’s Sacred Democracy

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ates, self-contain’d, different from others, more expansive, more rich and free, to be evidenced by original authors and poets to come, by American personalities, plenty of them, make and female, traversing the states, none excepted… and by a sublime and serious Religious Democracy sternly taking command, dissolving the old, sloughing off the surfaces, and from its own interior and vital principles reconstructing, democratizing society. A religio…

A Meditation on Shopping and Desire

By Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

…g meals or the “click, click, click” of the computer mouse in response to “free shipping!” “40 % off!” or “Buy one get one free!” in the United States, we are gluttonous consumers of material goods (and food, but that is a whole other subject). The value and consequences of shopping in dominant US culture puts the consumer on a roller-coaster ride. One year we are told that excessive, unwise spending and its resultant debt have led our country int…

Rewriting the History of Catholic Schools in America

By Marian Ronan

…religious identity. But even if Hughes was dedicated to American religious freedom, he certainly wasn’t dedicated to the freedom of Catholics within the church. Prior to his battle over the schools, Hughes spearheaded the destruction of the trustee system in Catholic parishes, a system that had since 1780 afforded the laity direct input into church governance. And as for Hughes’ dedication to poor Catholic children, it depends entirely on which on…

Archbishop of Chicago Accuses Emanuel of McCarthyism Over Chick-fil-A

By Sarah Posner

…ionally impossible to grant same-sex marriage rights and protect religious freedom. But then George does some more verbal gymnastics to try to claim that granting equal rights to gay and lesbian couples somehow constitutes an imposition of “state religion” on religious opponents of same-sex marriage—a bizarre formulation of the Establishment Clause. He concludes: Surely we can find a way not to play off newly invented individual rights to “marriag…

Opposition To DADT Repeal And The High Rate Of Evangelical Chaplains

By Sarah Posner

…avention of their own religious beliefs, they are required to support the “free exercise of religion” of all servicemembers and their families, and enter service with the knowledge that they will serve “a religiously diverse population.” In any case, if there is disproportionate opposition to repeal among chaplains, it’s a trend that was created by the effort to recruit evangelical chaplains who opposed open service by gays and lesbians. If it’s u…