Religion Dispatches
…at weird was, in fact, code for Mormon, and that Obama and team planned to use the word “weird” as a dog-whistle to stoke voters’ antipathies towards Mormonism in 2012. The news set off a wave of cringes among Mormon politicos as well. Because Mormons do recognize “weird” as a word that sticks to us in the American imagination. In 1995, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley declared in an interview with Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes, “We are not a…
Read More…e law—neither the Torah nor the laws of the Roman Church. The Christian is free from condemnation, free to obey God joyfully, and free to make individual choices about earthly matters—even including usury (lending money at interest). So thus far it may seem that Calvin put his stamp of approval on the market free-for-all that’s so popular with bankers, business owners, financiers, and Brat voters. In her post on RD Julie Ingersoll helpfully sums u…
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…to give money not just to schools with religious status, but for religious uses. That line between religious “status” and religious “use”—that government could not discriminate on the basis of [religious status] but was entitled not to fund [religious uses]—is in the process of being erased. This means, if the Maine case goes the way the oral argument suggested it might, that the state may be pulled into the enterprise of funding explicitly religi…
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…point of view, and therefore all religious activities are protected by the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment. “When Milford denied the Good News Club access… on the grounds that the club was religious in nature,” Clarence Thomas concluded in his majority opinion, “it discriminated against the Club because of its religious viewpoint.” Rather than examining whether the activity violated the Establishment Clause, which prevents the endorsemen…
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…helpful in moving the world forward. We have to make sure that we win the freedom to marry in countries where we can win and use those victories as building blocks so we can to lift up everyone, everywhere. Taiwan: Religious conservatives call for referendum against court ruling on marriage equality The Constitutional Court ruled on May 24 that it was unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. The Court gave the parliament two…
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…Regiment, “we notice that businesses are fleeing to neighboring cities because of overregulation. We see the liberal agenda being promoted under the mantra of ‘Keep Fayetteville Funky,’ but it has never encroached on us personally…. In August, all that changed.” Meanwhile, another Fayetteville pastor, Duncan Campbell describes their side’s effort as a virtuous takeover from the outside. “It was light invading the darkness,” he explains, “and the c…
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…rad students have wasted their potential on fruitless arguments in coffeehouses, we’re sorry. You’re going to want that free refill. Decaf, preferably, so you’re not up all night worrying about the disappearance of tenure and the surfeit of bad life choices you’ve made. “Algebra” by Emily Coble 5. Algebra For every time you’ve had to solve for x, a Muslim has duped you. Algebra was refined by an 8th century Persian Muslim mathematician, al-Khwariz…
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…socio-cultural and religious ceremonies.” Faced with a soaring rate of Diabetes caused by the abandonment of traditional foods for “white” food products, the Tohono O’odham of the Sonora Desert have organized through communal institutions to support a return to their nearly extinct thousand-year-old former diet, writes Marcello di Cintio in Gastronomica. This so-far successful process, an exemplary case study of the kind of resistance to the West…
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…g that keeps Americans from their hard-won incomes and dreams of financial freedom in a free market is a disgrace, if not downright devilry. Tea Partiers and party-challenged Republicans are basking in the glory of their victories, secure in the knowledge that a message pitting the “little man” against the “big government” resonated deeply and widely for many Americans in the first decade of the 21st century who hate government, love the military,…
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…lation of the European Convention on Human Rights, saying the law had been used to violate freedom of expression. The ruling was rejected by the Russian government; BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder notes that “Russia has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the ECHR’s authority in recent years, including adopting legislation in 2015 allowing for ECHR rulings to be ignored when they contradict the Russian Constitution.” More from Reuters: Pro-Kremlin politicians…
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