Religion Dispatches
…on of religious freedom in existing federal and state law, could provide a free pass to use religion to refuse service to certain types of customers. It was public opposition, widely shared by individuals, businesses, business interests, and religious actors, which spurred Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s veto, and the failure of similar bills in other states (save Mississippi). Opponents of LGBT equality face real, significant societal, cultural and leg…
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…vernment agencies administering grant programs are expected to distinguish between a house of worship’s religious identity and its religious activities is a spectacularly difficult (if not impossible) task that’s entirely ignored by the Court. Making such a distinction is now constitutionally essential, however, as programs must navigate between not funding religious activities, lest they violate the Establishment Clause, and not “discriminating”…
Read More…iffs’ claims under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise, Establishment, and Free Speech clauses. Under that standard, the court determined that the Newlands and Hercules would suffer a substantial burden on their free exercise of religion should they be required to provide contraception coverage under their self-insurance that that provide to the company’s employees, and that the government had not implemented the least restrictive means of carryin…
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…gun controllers would surely agree that obeying or disobeying the law is a free, individual choice. To use this Arminian sense of sin in the gun control debate may come perilously close to the pro-gun argument that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” But we are heirs of the progressives as well as the 19th-century reformers. We don’t have to choose between individual responsibility and systemic reform through government action. We can co…
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…out how people use their cellphones, they’re entering vague territory, because there’s no agreed-upon definition of “use.” I’d wager hard cash that if you asked the exact same question about churches after priming people to think of Bible apps, those opinions would be very different. “Oh, that kind of ‘use’! That’s generally okay.” From Etiquette to Ethics This brings us to our second insight, which is that it’s very hard to measure etiquette thro…
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…hen Gallup first asked the question. Gallup has polled Americans to choose between these three options 11 times since 1982, and this year’s poll does not significantly diverge from the 30-year average. Gallup also reports some unsurprising relationships between creationist views and religious affiliation, education levels, and political views. Creationism is strongly correlated with church attendance (two-thirds of weekly churchgoers subscribe to…
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…exual abuse in SBC churches, notes that “senior SBC leaders appeared to excuse abuse and/or support accused abusers… while at the same time survivors were ignored or treated poorly.” To put it mildly, we were not surprised. Nearly four years ago to the day, an RD headline read: “SBC’s #MeToo Problem isn’t a Rotten Apple, It’s a Rotten Tree.” In addition to its handling of individual cases, the report is also highly critical of the SBC Executive Co…
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…orms of speech. While Miller’s attorneys based their arguments on both the Free Speech and Free Exercise clauses of the Constitution, Judge Lampe declined to comment on the latter “because the case is sufficiently resolved upon Free Speech grounds.” But his ruling made clear that Miller denied service to the lesbian couple because she “is a practicing Christian and considers herself a woman of deep faith.” Not long after Judge Lampe exempted Mille…
Read More…his wives AND his concubines, between a man and a woman plus other women, between a man and his brother’s widow, between a man-as-rapist and his victim, and between male soldiers and their female prisoners of war. While it is true that advocates for equality and inclusion can never persuade biblical literalists that the clear direction of biblical testimony points toward inclusion (let alone shake their hilarious conviction that the Bible’s only…
Read More…from a group of present and former Mormon students who called themselves “Free BYU.” Because of a Brigham Young University policy, Mormon students who lose their faith, convert to another religion, or leave the church are automatically expelled from the University; and they lose their housing, scholarship, and campus jobs at the same time. This seemed so counter to the spirit of academic freedom—and to the very issues of religious liberty that th…
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