Religion Dispatches
…seem overdrawn at first glance. There seems to be a fundamental difference between a citizen and/or organization withholding taxes for state services with which they do not wish to be identified, and a citizen and/or organization being asked to provide those services themselves. The problem is that this creates a false distinction between the state as an actor and people as actors. State services are, all of them, provided by organizations and by…
Read More…Restoration Act, not on the plaintiffs’ 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…
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…im of bad faith. The conflict over Bevin’s prayer initiative is a conflict between neoliberal, libertarian strands of American evangelicalism, where privilege is accorded to the individual— gifted with free will, deciding his or her own fate—and an American social gospel tradition heavily flavored by the Enlightenment rationality of the Founders, with attention to structures of power as both historically damaging and burdened by responsibilities,…
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…Indeed, the tradition of sacred spaces as gun-free (weapon-free, violence-free, force-free) zones makes the use of sanctuary language in recent “Second Amendment Sanctuary” legislation curious. The turn from the use of “sanctuary” from its origins in restricting vengeance, violent enforcement, and weaponry to the protection of gun-keeping within the sanctuary borders, while rhetorically brilliant, feels particularly cynical when research shows th…
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…poor and without health coverage, that’s all about you. We wash our hands. Free markets: If you are poor, you are perfectly “free” to sleep under a bridge, in the immortal words of Anatole France. But the wealthy are totally free to suck up health care resources via tax-favored health savings accounts. And it goes without saying that the insurance companies and health providers are totally free to suck out your blood. State authority on insurance…
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…d, the Hartford Courant / Religion News Service reports that the “God gap” between religious and non-religious voters has shrunk this election year. In fact, it’s smaller than the gender gap for the first time since 1960. That means, voters are more likely to split according to their gender (women strongly prefer Obama) than they are according to whether they attend church. Or could it be as well that the late twentieth century LDS effort to pus…
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…s.” According to section 2, parties that “seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order or to endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany shall be unconstitutional.” Section 3 excludes from state financing parties that “are oriented towards an undermining or abolition of the free democratic basic order or an endangerment of the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany.” Judgement as to the constitutionality of poli…
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…’ shall be imposed on the people of these United States. We support a debt-free, interest-free money system.” Congressional Tea Partiers Vow to Challenge the Fed Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Fed, which passed the House earlier this year but didn’t become law, is expected to be even more popular in the incoming Congress. There’s even speculation that the House Republicans might mount a challenge to the whole system, and Rand Paul is promising to jo…
Read More…the memo was “based on a far-fetched interpretation of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” In a 2010 letter, CARD charged that continued reliance on the 2007 OLC memo “threatens core civil rights and religious freedom protections” and that the administration’s vague case-by-case approach “raises the problem of religious selectivity and provides scant opportunity for transparency or accountability. Following this approach indefinitely whi…
Read More…who will pay for the coverage: The catch here is that there’s a difference between “revenue neutral” and “free.” By one report’s measure, it costs about $21.40 to add birth control, IUDs and other contraceptives to an insurance plan. Those costs may be offset by a reduction in pregnancies. But unless drug manufacturers decide to start handing out free contraceptives, the money to buy them will have to come from somewhere. Where will it come from,…
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