Religion Dispatches
…the Manhattan Declaration, which appears as a blueprint for the “religious freedom” wars, and in the opposition to the HHS contraception benefit requirement, and in opposition to the jurisprudentially accepted understanding of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses. Chaput has made his views clear in other venues. In 2004, he suggested that because abortion was a “foundational” issue, there was only one way a faithful Catholic could vote. In…
Read More…ership. Komov suggested that during the era of Ronald Reagan, the U.S. was free, pro-Christian, and pro-capitalist, while Russia was mired in communism. He suggested that under Obama and Putin, a role reversal is under way. He said he would hesitate to say which country is more free, Russia or the U.S. Komov denied that there is any connection between passage of anti-gay legislation and anti-gay violence. WCF officials, by the way, are delighted t…
Read More…f freedom. Labor unions, in this view, could only be biblical if they were free associations and if any other laborer was free to undercut the wages they negotiate by agreeing to work for less. Specifically, in terms of developments in Wisconsin, fifty years of spreading “biblical economics” has created a religiously sanctioned battle against labor unions: Labor unions are gangs of legalized thugs. They do not believe in allowing employers and emp…
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…mean accepting a duty that is imposed by any force beyond the individual’s free choice in the immediate present. For Gandhi, such glorifying of free choice was the antithesis of true spirituality. Yet why dwell on the differences between these two spiritual giants, whether in their ideology or their views of the Jewish plight under Nazi rule? Why not focus on the very important areas of agreement? Buber and Gandhi agreed on the central value of tr…
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…just laws wherever there is a Christian presence because ‘Until we are all free, we are none of us free.’” Anglican Communion: Gay couple’s church wedding expected to rile Communion’s conservatives The first wedding by a same-sex couple in an Anglican Church in Britain is expected to further exacerbate tensions within the Anglican Communion. Excerpts from The Guardian’s Cathering Pepinster reporting: The first gay Anglican wedding in Britain took…
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…ference. When challenged about the clash between LGBT rights and religious freedom by Henk Jan van Schothorst of the Transatlantic Christian Council, Muntarbhorn said that religious freedom is not absolute and must yield to homosexual rights. “There are some absolute rights,” he said in apparent reference to LGBT rights, “but there are some that are not absolute.” He went on to explain that “freedom of expression and expression of religion” are no…
Read More…ally the inaccurate descriptor. After all, Arizona already has a Religious Freedom Restoration Act; SB 1062’s supporters even described it as a way of closing that statute’s alleged “loopholes.” What’s more, since Arizona, unlike its neighbor New Mexico, doesn’t recognize sexual orientation as a protected class in its anti-discrimination laws, all the photographers and bakers and everyone else in Arizona were already perfectly free to turn LGBT pe…
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…. This fear has generated a tornado of employer opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. For those who work for ethical employers or have never experienced this damaging practice wielded against workers, it is hard to understand all the dust thrown up by the tornado. Employer groups led by the Chamber of Commerce are in a tizzy, claiming the sky will fall if the bill is passed. Labor groups are united in their support for EFCA, believing it is…
Read More…ampion open government and civil society and fight corruption. We bolster freedom of assembly and a free press…. At times, we are compelled to make tough choices when the immediate need to defend our national security requires us to work with governments that do not share our fundamental commitment to human rights. No one knows that better than all of you. We look to you to strike the extremely difficult balance that both preserves critical bil…
Read More…classic evil ‘them’ of US history. Of course, US history itself is hardly free of this phenomenon. Hard-hat construction workers attacked peace demonstrators during the Vietnam War era, and then a decade later became “Reagan Democrats,” supporting the very policies that have kept their real wages nearly stagnant for so many years now. Today, less than a third of voters identify as Republicans or conservatives, yet nearly half say they will vote f…
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