Religion Dispatches
…y still have pull at the polls. According FRC’s “National Omnibus Study” of 800 likely voters, conducted over June 25, 26 and 29, “marriage protection amendments” on the November ballot in California, Florida, and Arizona are still firing up evangelical voters. An FRC press release issued on July 10, trumpeted the finding that anti-same-sex marriage initiatives have “the potential for significant political impact,” noting that: 58% of likely voter…
Read MoreClaremont School of Theology caught national attention on June 9 with the announcement of a new inter-religious university. Beginning in the fall, students at this Methodist seminary will study side by side with students from the Academy of Jewish Religion in Los Angeles and the Islamic Center of Southern California. The San Diego Jewish Journal calls it “the world’s first multi-religious graduate school.” Of course, Claremont is not alone. Hartf…
Read More
…taphor, forgetting that the so-called patient being “tested” is actually an 800-pound gorilla that needs to be put into a cage if not shot dead outright. Johnson pointed out this morning that today’s news non-event even has a kind of Goldilocks character that the big media are bound to lap right up. It will turn out that the $1 trillion in TARP is an amount “just right” to cover the self-declared capital needs of the big banks. Bernanke said this…
Read More…ere’s no compelling argument for allowing religious organizations to be opaque about their money. And besides, there are plenty of ways to steal from nonprofits even when they do file 990s. The interesting thing about all three cases is that they reveal the compulsion to sort out the messy business of religion in America once and for all. But the wall of separation between church and state is neither entirely solid nor porous. The better metaphor…
Read More
…. This semester, more than 800 students are registered in Professor Bott’s classes. (Eleven are registered for BYU’s African-American history course this semester.) Professors at BYU routinely find themselves having to address racist and sexist content taught in Bott’s classes, and many are outraged and embarrassed by his rogue remarks to the Washington Post, say sources at the university. “Dr. Bott does not speak for BYU or the Church and his vie…
Read More
[Derrion Jones, a sixteen-year-old honor student, was beaten to death on his way home from school in Chicago—a city which has suffered the violent deaths of 34 school-age children in the past year. Attention to this tragic incident has reached through city and state government to the Obama White House. In the wake of recent events, Ibrahim Abusharif reflects on the toll of youth violence.] It’s a small grace of life that people with winsome proje…
Read More
One of the assumptions behind those seeking a religious exception to the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act—as well as behind religious exceptions in general—is that they are more or less exceptional. By that I mean that they are deployed in a narrow range of circumstances by a narrow range of actors who believe their religious liberty would be threatened by taking part in a specific act or service provision. Inherent in this argume…
Read More…ow what they are doing or understand where this new tidal wave of cash will actually go. So, flow the money will, anywhere between 600 and 800 billion dollars worth… but where will it go?…
Read More
…e trajectory of deacon-priest-bishop is relatively recent—only about 700 or 800 years in the long history of the Church. In fact, the earlier understanding is that the deacon would become a bishop! I sometimes wonder if the naysayers are more afraid of women bishops than of women priests. But, in modern times, we have reestablished the tradition of a diaconate lived permanently. All priests are also ordained deacons, and in the most formal of litu…
Read More
…e, as it were) is Catholic natural law moral philosophy. Natural law is the 800-year-old Thomist tradition that absorbs (from revelation and scripture) and communicates (into public discourse and legal practice) a quite specific understanding of the human individual as the summit of God’s creation. First Things has hosted some of the most important debates and produced some of the most fruitful arguments in support of National Conservatism, the in…
Read More