Religion Dispatches
…go, so he quickly and rather inexplicably pivots to claiming that the truly important questions he must answer are actually about economic growth. And here you can see the free association at work: economic growth -> free market. Otherwise known as “teach the controversy,” not the science….
Read More…events.” In January 2009, principal Frank Lay and athletic director Robert Freeman were accused of violating the consent decree when “Lay asked Freeman to offer a prayer of blessing during a school-day luncheon for the dedication of a new field house at Pace High School. “Freeman complied with the request and offered the prayer at the event. It appears this was a school-sponsored event attended by students, faculty and community members.” In respo…
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…rganized religion (religio = binding) in their lives. Protestantism spawns free thought and free radicals (some of them toxic) the way a prism breaks light into uncountable and unclassifiable hues. So while it is definitely not fair to count the great unchurched free radicals of the 19th and 20th centuries as official Protestants, there is no doubt at all that, unofficially, that is just what many were: not just the towering Lincoln but also such…
Read More…on Twitter that he helped Cardinal Timothy Dolan with his recent paean to free-market capitalism in the Wall Street Journal (note to Mr. Kudlow, there is a reason they call it “ghostwriting”): I worked w/ @CardinalDolan on this @WSJopinion op-ed. It does strike balance. Tell me what you think. #tcot. http://t.co/BvSBxoHrdI — Larry Kudlow (@larry_kudlow) May 23, 2014 Kudlow is a former Reagan Administration official who is well known for his suppo…
Read More…ssues. Despite Throckmorton’s wish, these groups are not likely to abandon free speech claims as their chief line of defense against the SPLC. The possible squelching of their free speech is the only rational argument they have; even their religious liberty arguments fall short, as they’ve been unable to offer any actual proof that their religious liberty has been vanquished in Massachusetts or Iowa. The free speech claim is the only one for which…
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…anguage was religiously abhorrent to huge numbers of Muslims. But the same freedom of speech that permitted The Satanic Verses made it possible for me to attend a thoughtful, and exceptionally relevant, sermon at my local mosque, here in Cincinnati. The preacher discussed how the Prophet Muhammad clarified that ritual observance of religious law did not prove genuine piety. That if our deeds do not equal our words—and our words our deeds—something…
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…ndment, the current media and political discourse around deplatforming and free speech consistently fails to reckon with an all-important fact: The ways in which speech works in use, in the form of speech acts. I submit that with a fuller understanding of speech and meaning, which takes speech-qua-speech acts into consideration, we see much reason on the side of those who advocate the deplatforming of white supremacist speech and speakers. On the…
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…’s. Jerry Falwell Jr., Chancellor of Liberty University, has offered her a free ride at Liberty to complete her college education. He noted that all of the male students currently enrolled, having seen her bikini pictures, would line up to donate the funds personally. (It’s not entirely clear whether she can meet the dress code, once she were to arrive, however.) Shrouding Sexual Titillation and Drooling Voyeurism with the Patina of Beauty and Vir…
Read More…eady home to many thousands of corporations that enjoy a form of religious freedom. In the terms of section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, these corporations are called “churches,” their “integrated auxiliaries,” and “conventions or associations of churches,” where churches are defined as a “subset of IRC 501(c)(3) organizations organized and operated for religious purposes.” Necessarily, such entities are artificial or fictive persons un…
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…ibowitz of Hebrew University said that for him the question was not how to free the territories from Israel, but rather, “how to free Israel from the territories.” A Palestinian Gandhi? Among Palestinian intellectuals, both violent and nonviolent opposition to Israeli rule were among the possibilities discussed in the first two decades after the 1967 War. Among those who have advocated nonviolent resistance and have therefore been dubbed a “Palest…
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