Religion Dispatches
…standing. The difficult question is what the state legitimately may do to promote this end. If the state is to intervene on behalf of the reputation and standing of “Muslims,” or any other faith community, it must first decide on whose behalf it is intervening. It must lend its official approval to some idea of what counts as a “real” or “authentic” member of such groups. Were Aan’s expressions hateful or abusive toward Muslims? That depends on w…
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…f the poor benighted white Christians who fall for subtle or not so subtle appeals to racial identity and racial solidarity. Sitting in judgment may be the classic posture of white liberals, but it’s hardly good enough when so much is at stake over the next 30 years of momentous demographic change. Singing our little paeans to diversity while remaining remarkably un-diverse in our own pods; wagging our fingers from our ivory towers in response to…
Read More…to have the help of a lot of good people.” It’s not like Romney and Trump happen to disagree about, oh, I don’t know, what to do about the deficit. Romney’s saying Trump’s a good person, and they just happen to disagree about a few things, like whether the president of the United States is an American citizen. Of course Trump’s birtherism is a proxy for Islamophobia. Has Romney met this Trump? The Koran is very interesting. A lot of people say it…
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…demonstrates, are “myths,” or paradigmatic models of reality that help us code our visions of the world and inform our social vocabularies, conceptions of self, and varying personal relationships. One’s views about the origins of humanity signal special allegiance, at the moment, to a broad social collective and a general worldview. In short, whether you are a die-hard secularist or an adamant creationist, you subscribe to a large and complex nar…
Read More…oly Land Foundation trial. Meanwhile, the Family Research Council has just appointed Lt. General William G. “Jerry” Boykin (Ret.) as executive vice president. Boykin, among other things, has claimed that “we need to realize that Islam itself is not just a religion—it is a totalitarian way of life. It’s a legal system, shari’ah law; it’s a financial system; it’s a moral code; it’s a political system; it’s a military system. It should not be protect…
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…to science, proponents of biblical orthodoxy have assumed the role of self-appointed guardians of the truth. Such claims are the feeble attempt to provide answers to moral questions using a litany of biblical texts that support their presuppositions. Historically, this type of application has been on the wrong side of human suffering and inequality. Support for slavery, segregation, denying women the right to vote, the Holocaust, Apartheid, as we…
Read More…ooklet’s content isn’t religious: This may be the first nonreligious moral code based wholly on common sense. It was written by L. Ron Hubbard as an individual work and it not part of any religious doctrine. Any reprinting or individual distribution of it does not infer connection with or sponsorship of any religious organization. It is therefore admissible for government departments and employees to distribute it as a nonreligious activity. (Repr…
Read More…the day in 1954 when the “Johnson amendment” language was put into the tax code was the day that “changed America” and set the stage for bad Supreme Court decisions and everything else that has gone wrong since the 1960s. Pulpit Freedom Sunday participants agree to preach political sermons, send them to the IRS, and dare the agency to sue them. The Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund) has offered legal help to c…
Read More…rence to “religious freedom” from Romney. Insiders know that the latter is code for exempting individuals and institutions from following government mandates on health care and provisions on anti-discrimination. But to the middle, Romney’s comment surely passed under the radar. And as for Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, even Paul Ryan is for that now. All this in the shadow of an unprecedented legal war against women’s reproductive choices, and an ever-morp…
Read More…, could he possibly come out in favor of arresting women for praying? Or even, with a straight face, say it was a matter of local concern that he wasn’t going to comment on, when he otherwise has (albeit in a perfunctory way) called for the promotion of women’s rights in other parts of the Middle East? And since Obama was promoting the rights and freedom of religious minorities last night, wouldn’t this case fall under his concern? There are good…
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