Religion Dispatches
…e classic culture-war debates. What would it mean to have a pro-family tax policy? What would it mean to have a pro-family health care policy?” ++++++++++ RD Tidbits Hein to Baylor: Jay Hein, who was deputy assistant to President George W. Bush and director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, has been hired by Baylor University as Distinguished Senior Fellow and director of the Program for Faith and Service at Baylor University…
Read More…age as a Christian nation and remove all other gods.” Last week, Americans United sent a letter to Roanoke County officials, warning that although the Court upheld Greece’s policy, “the Court also made clear that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause prohibits legislative bodies from excluding non-Christian prayer givers or otherwise discriminating in selection.” Following the AU letter, Bedrosian reiterated to the Roanoke Times that he would…
Read More…thin the Islamic context saying that Kuala Lumpur should withdraw from the United Nations if the government was not serious about upholding human rights for all. Amnesty International Malaysia’s Executive Director Shamini Darshni also criticized the Prime Minister, reports the Malay Mail, saying that the principles of the Universal Declaration of HumanRights “take precedence over faiths to as to ascribe a sense of equality among all persons.” Caym…
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…s and maybe even the denomination. Maybe the United Methodist Church won’t be here anymore. But I don’t believe that means God has given up on us. Remember what Elaine Stanovsky said this morning: the church is of God, but the church isn’t God. *While John and Debbie were the first United Methodist clergy couple with membership in the Oregon-Idaho Conference, Rev. Alice Knotts, a United Methodist and her then husband, Rev. Robert Morrison, a Pre…
Read More…T members and leaders. Share them? I was unaware that the Boy Scouts had a policy against gay members and leaders until I learned that they were considering changing it. I was shocked. Now that they have decided to postpone the decision until May, I am completely annoyed because it should not have been that hard of a decision in the first place. If they decide against allowing gay members and leaders into the Boy Scouts, I think I will leave the o…
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…xplained. As Judge Ann Claire Williams said in her ruling for the court: A policy that requires an individual to use a bathroom that does not conform with his or her gender identity punishes that individual for his or her gender non‐conformance, which in turn violates Title IX. As BuzzFeed‘s Chris Geidner noted, the ruling also emphatically rejects the transphobic (and unfounded) concerns about “safety” and “privacy” advanced by the Kenosha Unifie…
Read More…rch is doing.) The Church ought to recover from its surprise and walk this policy back. Instead, it is adding insult to injury by claiming that it was designed to protect the very children who are being excluded. Apostle D. Todd Christofferson explained that the Church is worried about these children dealing with disagreements between its teachings and their parents. Yet that concern would apply to all children with at least one non-Mormon member….
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…ce the recent flurry of pronouncements about trans folk and the changes in policy reflected in the new handbook insisting that ‘gender’ means ‘biological sex at birth.’ You’d think that God would possess the foresight to include this in the Proclamation in the first place. Of course, the church has never been very clear about intersex folk and the reason is that they have never really given a good explanation of how they fit into Mormonism’s sex/g…
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…at presidential inaugurations has two answers: a Constitutional one and a policy one. In terms of the Constitution, the answer is that such prayers are desired by the majority and like any other policy in a democratic country, the desire of the voters controls unless the Constitution specifies otherwise. The Establishment Clause was probably aimed at preventing the establishment of a particular religion of the sort that Americans were familiar wi…
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…nose-to-nose confrontation, not a head-to-head talk. This kind of foreign policy ideology would have had strong resonance with anyone who had raised their children according to Dobson’s principles. In addition to mirroring his own parenting logic, Dobson also brings the consequences of failed parenting and his anti-homosexual agenda to foreign policy, particularly in his description of US elected officials who failed to speak up in the wake of Hu…
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