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An Untold Tale: American Fiction vs. The Religious Right

By Christopher Douglas

…respect for identities. But as it turned out, this language was also being used by conservative Christians themselves, as with the notion that the religious sensibility of bakers is being offended when they have gay customers ordering a wedding cake. Although liberals often think that identity politics has been a great driver of progress, I try to remind everyone that it’s actually through human rights claims–not identity claims–that progress has…

What My Christian High School Taught Me About Being a Black Girl

By Carlyn Ferrari

…aught never to question and to respect the authority of white men. And because they were telling me how to be good, it made them appear infallible. So I was silent because I knew nobody would listen if I spoke up. I was good. * I was in high school long before the Obama administration issued strict guidelines on Title IX cases reminding schools of their obligation to protect students. To be honest, I doubt these guidelines would have made a differ…

War Is Not “Hell” It’s “Sin”: Jews and Muslims Hunger Strike Against Violence

By Shaul Magid

…tragedy, the great legal codifier Moses Maimonides states in his medieval Code of Law (Mishneh Torah) that the very act of fasting, for whatever reason (and here he may have been influenced by Sufi doctrine), is really about repentance. The Hunger Strike against Violence is not a fast intended to commemorate past Jewish disasters. It is not a fast in response to collective violence against the Jews. It is a fast of protest. And in that sense it i…

Televangelist Watchdog May Be Forced to Close Its Doors

By Sarah Posner

…as Trinity has argued repeatedly, the problem results from gaps in the tax code, and lax enforcement of rules within it: because televangelism ministries, granted tax-exempt status as “churches,” do not have to file tax returns, their financial activities remain hidden. What’s more, although IRS rules prohibit excessive compensation of non-profit executives, and theoretically authorize the agency to fine non-profits whose executives receive such c…

In Russia It Is Now a Crime to Insult Someone’s Religious Feelings

By Chrissy Stroop

…less familiar to Western readers than the Pussy Riot trial itself, which caused a sensation in the Western media. (In my opinion, the most nuanced coverage of the events associated with Pussy Riot can be found here, in a piece that I readily admit I wish I had written myself.) The protection of religious believers’ feelings has been enshrined in the Russian Civil Code for quite some time, but making it a criminal offense to insult the feelings of…

Women of Opus Dei Explain “True Feminism”

By Kate Childs Graham

…shrouded in secrecy, came into the spotlight after Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code hit the New York Times bestseller list. The novel suggested that the women in Opus Dei are “forced to clean the men’s residence halls for no pay,” and remarked upon the broad subjugation of women in the order. And while the novel is fictional, the alleged “misconceptions” that arose in the fallout of the media attention surrounding The DaVinci Code provided much of the…

Will IRS Crack Down on Church Politicking?

By Sarah Posner

…p, whose tax exempt status is under section (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, risk their tax-exempt status if they use tax-exempt resources to endorse political candidates. Although the law is clear, no audits have been initiated since 2009, after a federal court ordered the agency to issue regulations clarifying requirements that audits of churches be authorized by an “appropriate high-level Treasury official.” During the uproar over the suppo…

Texas Board of Education Wants to Change History

By Lauri Lebo

…h, and Phillips are being less literal-minded and more disingenuous. “They use it deliberately because it has superficial appeal to people who just don’t think things through,” he said. “The polls have never shown great Constitutional literacy in this country, right down to knowing the rights spelled out in the First Amendment.” “So the facts be damned,” Boston said. And he added: They have a purer form of knowledge that transcends facts; they bel…

“I Had No Intention to Write Atheistically”: Darwin, God, and the 2500-Year History of the Debate

By Edward J. Larson

…ions and fierce appetites of the merest quadruped? Is mother-love vile because a hen shows it, or fidelity base because dogs possess it? These were the new questions of the Darwinian age. Differences in Degree Rather than in Kind After steering clear of the intense public debate over human evolution for over a decade, Darwin finally broke his public silence on the subject in his 1871 book, Descent of Man. “The sole object of this work,” he wrote,…

Global LGBT Recap: Homogeopolitics; Dalai Lama Says Gay is OK; Pope Says Civil Unions May Be

By Peter Montgomery

…week” from LGBT persons in the rural areas, typically reporting familial abuse, abuse by the authorities, jailing and subsequent bribery by officials for their release…. The Catholic Church has played a major role in fomenting anti-gay hate, in a country that is 39 percent Catholic. In a Christmas sermon a few years ago, former Archbishop Victor Tonye Bakot called same-sex marriage “a serious crime against humanity.” He continued, “We need to stan…