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Vaccine Mandates are Constitutional; Religious Exemptions are Unnecessary and Harmful

By Andrew L. Seidel

…fety of anyone else. You might believe you can safely operate a car while drunk; but if you get behind the wheel we punish that reckless behavior. Vaccine refusal is reckless in the same way drunk driving is. Whether the belief is religious or not doesn’t change the calculus. If you need an easier example, just think of ritual human sacrifice. Is murder permitted if the murderer believes his god commands it? If religion were a license to violate a…

Elephant Orphans and Ecological Spiritualities: An Earth Day Reflection

By Jacob J. Erickson

…athers at the Elephant Orphanage and nursery in Nairobi National Park. The internationally renowned orphanage, associated with The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and the Kenya Wildlife service, has successfully rescued over 150 orphaned baby elephants and the occasional baby rhino, reintroducing them back to the wild of Tsavo East National Park. Many people now know of the nursery through the extraordinary work of Dr. Dame Daphne Sheldrick and her…

As a Muslim, I am Exhausted…

By Nabil Echchaibi

…a Muslim, I condemn Ebola.” But it’s not the Afflecks or the Mahers of the world we need to write about. I am far more concerned about how our creative energies are wasted reacting to this endless provocation. As a Muslim, I’m exhausted. You may think that what plagues Muslims today is a rowdy minority of gung-ho militants in the desert of Iraq and Syria. I think our problem is more subtle than that. We have convinced ourselves, and others, that w…

Perry’s Challenge to Bachmann for Religious Right Vote

By Sarah Posner

…and was the impetus for much of the homeschooling curriculum still in use today.” It’s crucial here to understand, as Julie has explained so often and so well, Christian Reconstructionism as a source for the anti-government positioning of the religious right and the Tea Party: As Reconstructionists see it, there are three spheres of institutional authority established by God: the family, the church and that civil government. Each of the instituti…

Darrell Issa’s Show Trial
on Alleged Obama Administration “Anti-Catholic Bias”

By Sarah Posner

…fabricated scandal isn’t going away anytime soon, though. It’s a perfect crucible for interrelated Republican cause celebres that all serve as election season fodder: that the Obama administration “promotes abortion;” that contraceptives are like a gateway drug for abortion; and that the Obama administration is depriving the Catholic Bishops of their religious liberty. But the Democrats could easily turn this around on the Republicans. Should rap…

UK Christian Mag Argues for “Separate but Equal” Unions

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…a heterosexual couple Try as they might to paint the distinction between “marriage” and “civil partnerships” as something to celebrate, Christian Today merely reminds us why no one is truly equal until we all are….

Mormon Leaks: Boring Meetings with Interesting Implications

By Mary Barker

…concern prevailed. The brethren expressed considerable unease about a destructive bias in the news concerning Islam and deemed it imperative that the Mormon faithful be sensitive to Muslims and properly educated as to their beliefs. These aspects of the Mormon Leaks videos resonate with my own grassroots experience of the faith as an earnest community that seeks to be of service, and especially to be kind. While this may seem to clash with positi…

New Report: Young People Leaving Church for Science

By Paul Wallace

…y more polarized today than it was in, say, 1978. I know that anti-science runs amok in churches today. I read about it every day. But because the churches I’ve attended have been neither conservative nor reactionary, and because I’ve spent the large majority of my adult years on university campuses, I don’t have any direct exposure to life in anti-science congregations. Have any of you left the church (or a church) mainly because of its antagonis…

Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

By Diane Winston

…to be a Lutheran in northern Minnesota? How has Vacation Bible School at a rural Arkansas Baptist church changed since the ’60s? Who are the women behind the biggest Methodist congregation in Cleveland? I want to know more about the people who believe religion to be a positive social good. Do they tune out the news or find ways to live in a messy both/and reality. (I am assuming not all these people are right-wingers.) I don’t want more top-down c…