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Why I Boycotted a Conference at Brigham Young University

…us jobs at the same time. This seemed so counter to the spirit of academic freedom—and to the very issues of religious liberty that the conference was promoting—that in conscience I felt that I had to take a stand. I had looked forward to the conference. The issue was important, the international roster of scholars participating was impressive, and my old friend and colleague, David Little, was to receive an award for his work on issues of religio…

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NPR Gives a Free Pass to Biblical Literalists

…not ceded and will never cede the Bible to those who devoutly want God’s Word and God’s will to align with their own prejudice. NPR should be embarrassed to broadcast an ostensibly analytic piece that concludes by giving a free pass to the literalists and by reinforcing the notion that those of us who read the Bible for its core message are really not reading it at all. Eagerly awaiting the next pledge drive, (Rev.) Peter Laarman Los Angeles…

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LGBTQ Equality Pendulum “Abruptly” Swinging Back as Religious Exemptions Gain Victories

…orms of speech. While Miller’s attorneys based their arguments on both the Free Speech and Free Exercise clauses of the Constitution, Judge Lampe declined to comment on the latter “because the case is sufficiently resolved upon Free Speech grounds.” But his ruling made clear that Miller denied service to the lesbian couple because she “is a practicing Christian and considers herself a woman of deep faith.” Not long after Judge Lampe exempted Mille…

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Jewish Studies Is a Free-Speech Zone, and It Needs to Stay That Way

…ing Jewish life on college campuses. While I was aware of their efforts to promote certain discourses and to curtail others, I largely left them alone. This was perhaps made easier on my campus because Hillel does not really bring in speakers—on top of the fact that I have the privilege to teach some of the brightest students I have ever encountered. Many of my Jewish students here are searchers, trying to make sense of their religion and to make…

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Pulitzer-Prize Winning Historian’s Latest Reveals the Problem with Today’s ‘Religious Freedom’

…than a historical summation, described by Rakove thusly: “Disestablishment promoted free exercise, and free exercise made establishment superfluous.” Beyond Belief recounts this history, and, while Rakove touches on the present, his focus is the past. But it’s impossible to read Beyond Belief and not notice that, in their desperation to “make America great again” Trump, Pence, and the other Christian nationalist politicians and judges have turned…

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How the Abortion Debate Turned the Christian Right On To Liberal Arguments… and Birthed the Religious Freedom Industry

…m the right concerns same-sex marriage. How did they settle on a religious freedom frame? Even prior to Obergefell v. Hodges, religious freedom arguments were being advanced by conservative Christians who disapproved of same-sex marriage. For example, several state-level Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) were put into motion in 2014 and early 2015 in part to try and protect religious objectors. Immediately after the Obergefell decision, th…

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Will a New Dawkins Foundation-Sponsored App Help Atheists Talk to Believers?

…nality.’” Of course, Richard Dawkins himself wasn’t sitting around writing code and coming up with reasonably civil responses to hypothetical religious proclamations for Atheos (although some less famous but equally antagonistic thinkers like David Silverman did contribute to the app’s content). And for many atheists, even those not prone to Dawkins’ venomous outbursts against religious people, his name lends the app credibility. He remains a figu…

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Catholic Archbishop Takes On Jesuit Magazine’s Slam on “Ecumenism of Hate”; and More in Global LGBT Recap

…7% of Australian Christians believe all federal parliamentarians should be free to vote on same-sex marriage as soon as possible. It found support for a free vote is strong across all Christian age groups, but strongest among millennials (aged 18-34) at 86%. It also asked about civil celebrants’ right to refuse to marry same-sex couples. At the moment, wedding service providers such as civil celebrants, or businesses such as florists or caterers,…

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Fear Not, The IRS Isn’t Colluding With Angry Atheists

…tive legal and religious groups that the agency is attempt to stifle their free speech. Through efforts such as Pulpit Freedom Sunday, pastors openly flout the law. Enforcement of the rule, and the revocation of a participating church’s tax-exempt status, though, could trigger a constitutional challenge to it. The rule against politicking, though, isn’t aimed at suppressing free speech but at ensuring that taxpayers don’t subsidize political activ…

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Pittsburgh Paradox: A City Haunted by God and Steel

…thiest industrial metropolis in America, only to see its economy gutted by free-market orthodoxy—makes the region a metaphor for the nation itself. Which is what makes the spiritual implications of Pittsburgh’s meaning all the more important, because if we try and reconcile transcendence with grubby reality, we derive a poetics of the sacred amidst the profane, what I described in a 2015 essay in Belt Magazine as being a place of “strangeness and……

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