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My Business, Myself: Piercing the Corporate Veil

…ed by businesses like Annex challenge the ACA’s contraception mandate on a number of grounds. The most significant challenge invokes the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, claiming that the insurance coverage mandate imposes a substantial burden on the free exercise of religion. Annex Medical lost its claim because the court concluded that the mandate does not impose a substantial burden on religious exercise and in the widely-publicized H…

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We Were Here Before September 11th

…n that side. None of them are Muslim. So I realized it actually makes very little difference that I have Islam in my blood. It doesn’t make any difference that President Obama’s father was Muslim, albeit a secular, and non-practicing Muslim, because Obama gets to make his own choice; and it was not Islam. So he can stop apologizing for that too. What I am still having a hard time fathoming is: why so many Americans still identify Islam as foreign?…

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Why Anti-Gay Bullying is a Theological Issue

…e of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. I cannot count the number of times I have heard well-meaning, good-hearted people respond to this appeal, saying, “Things are a lot better for gay people today than they were several years (or decades) ago. In time, our society (or churches) will come around on this issue.” To these friends and others, I must say, “It’s time.” For Lucas, Brown, Clementi, Walsh, and Chase the time is up. For t…

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This Year in Satanism

…alism that Harvard has traditionally espoused. JUNE In June, Greaves did a number of interviews taking aim at Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and his efforts to ban gay marriage and limit access to abortion. A native of Detroit, Greaves called Snyder “an idiot governor.” He discussed campaigns that would invoke the free exercise clause to challenge Snyder’s legislation, including the assertions that gay marriage is a Satanic sacrament and that Satan…

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More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

…television show, the PTL Club, was broadcast live, five days a week, with little scripting. Tammy once did an episode on a merry-go-round. One cast member threw up in the dog costume he was wearing as they spun round and round, all on live television. At the time it all seemed fresh and, for many, exciting. The sex and financial shenanigans were only interesting because of the size of PTL’s cultural footprint. Did you have a specific audience in…

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Holy Father, You’re Not Helping: The Problem with the Pope’s Plan to Consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

…hief among them contention over the pope’s claim to universal authority. A number of violent incidents over two hundred years, from both sides of Christianity’s two halves, helped solidify the separation. These included the Byzantine massacre of Catholics living in Constantinople in 1182, the sacking of Thessaloniki by Catholics in 1185, and their pillage of Constantinople in 1204. Finally, the establishment of Rome-allied episcopacies in traditio…

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Glenn Beck’s Salvation Army

…on against the constitutional principle of church-state separation, the bedrock of individual religious liberty. I’m not going to evaluate Beck’s interpretation of liberation theology here. (For a thoughtful response to Beck’s interpretation of liberation theology, see RD’s interview with scholar Serene Jones by Elijah Prewitt-Davis.) But it is clear that Beck is dismissing the faith of millions when he creates a simplistic label—‘individual’ or ‘…

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Orthodox Jews Begin to Reckon with Sexual Abuse

…ss prevalent in the Orthodox community than anywhere else; but there are a number of peculiarities to Orthodox Jewish life that have made the reporting of abuse less common than in society at large. “I think the subject of abuse is probably the same in any religious community,” says Michael Salomon, a Long Island psychiatrist, who has just finished working on an as-yet-unpublished book about sexual abuse in the Orthodox world. “Different religions…

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New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

…o “blasphemous content.” The IHEU reports being contacted by an increasing number of secularist groups organizing on Facebook, including groups in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, and Sudan. In all of this, the United States is an anomaly since it rejects even laws against religious hate speech, which were found in 36 of 45 European states in 2011. It’s the best place in the wo…

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The New Age Fantasy of a Celtic Church that Revered Nature and the Divine Feminine Never Existed — So What?

…est coast of Scotland. Iona is the veritable navel of Celtic Christianity. Rocky-shored with low green hills clustered in its small interior, the Isle of Iona was where the Irish Abbot St. Columba established his monastery in the sixth-century, a community intended for monks who would produce illuminated manuscripts in their scriptorium by the rhythm of the daily liturgy, living a life of prayer and contemplation before being buried beneath the nu…

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