Religion Dispatches
…ry cannot, for example, access the Wikipedia page on Wicca, though they’re free to read the Catholic Encyclopedia’s page on Paganism. By banning the categories into which minority religions are classified, the library’s policy appears to violate the Constitution’s establishment clause. By extension, it would be unconstitutional for any government agency to use Netsweeper to censor public access to “occult” sites. However, Netsweeper is a global co…
Read More…e commercials and stay up until the last segment of the news. Sex sells. A free society needs a free press, of that the Founders were certain. Investigative reporting is the true fifth column, a crucial further “check and balance” on the relentless consolidation of power in the electronic age. But with increasingly scarce resources, isn’t it important that investigative reporters are working to save lives, both at home and abroad, rather than titi…
Read More…ill: they can only obey Allah. The jinn, like the human creatures, do have free will and can disobey. This is different from the version of this story in Genesis, where there was “war in heaven” and the war was against God. We don’t have a God in such compromising positions. In the Qur’anic story, Satan disobeys and still knows that God is one. Think about that. It was not disbelief in God’s oneness that was the problem. He (and it’s always a he s…
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…o believe differently from the rich and the powerful is a prerequisite for free speech and a free press, the other two elements of the First Amendment of the US Constitution.” How does your report fit into today’s political landscape? Over the years, the Christian Right has evolved, shaping events and not merely reacting to them. Conservatives have consistently responded to changing social roles and increasing efforts at equality for the historica…
Read More…s make against LGBT equality is that civil rights for LGBT people infringe on the religious freedom of Christians who believe homosexuality is sin. Therefore they insist the government shouldn’t give them, in Santorum’s words, “special privileges.” Conservatives frame this as a free exercise, or religious freedom issue, and, like Bachmann, skirt the church-state separation issue. Because these conservatives believe that the government should endor…
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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…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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…heir own Globe and Mail essay, however, the land that settlers imagined as free wilderness was neither free nor empty. And, they write, the deadly effects of the myths of settler masculinity persist today, as the trial of Colten Boushie’s killer showed. Even if Mennonites thought they had found a pacifist’s paradise in the prairies, their deeds to the land came at the price of violence to Indigenous peoples who still understood the land as their o…
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…xactly what the Establishment Clause prohibits. The Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies emphasized the Free Exercise Clause and their own “religious freedom,” but they ignore, most certainly not by accident, the principle upon which Judge Stearns’ decision rests: “[t]o insist that the government respect the separation of church and state is not to discriminate against religion; indeed, it promotes a respect for religion by refusing to single ou…
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…sing from the use of this Service by anyone else. I’m not sure how much money the Information Age Prayer service has made or how many people would be stupid enough to pay for something they can hit their knees every day and do for free (heck, I do my best praying in the car – all for free!), but it seems to be a mark of today’s pay to play society. There’s no free lunch, not even with God, apparently. As a final sop, the IAP Web owners promise, th…
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