Religion Dispatches
…whether we have finally woken up from our dream of perpetually cheap oil, free of all cost, free of all sacrifice. And yet the events in the Gulf call out for confession, for corporate confession and repentance. By corporate I mean BP, of course, but even more importantly I mean our society as a corporate whole. We must move beyond defensiveness and self-righteousness and work toward a cultural consensus that acknowledges the vital work of regula…
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…hat African people would do, because they’re cursed. We still wouldn’t get free. There’s no freedom anywhere. And that it was God’s idea—it was not white people’s ide it was God’s idea that we be in that place. And there was a church in Welshneck, South Carolina that, when the Emancipation proclamation came and African people were freed, a group of them went to this church and wanted to become members of the church. Now of course they couldn’t si…
Read More…urt. Judge Carol E. Jackson dismissed O’Brien’s claims under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Free Exercise, Establishment, and Free Speech Clausees of the First Amendment. On the RFRA claim—one that conservative opponents of the HHS rule have portrayed as more or less open and shut—the judge ruled that the coverage requirement does not “substantially burden” (the relevant legal standard) O’Brien’s religious practice: Frank O’Brien i…
Read More…clichéd word turbulence, and free love, and things like that. But there’s free love in the 1920s; there’s free love in the 1930s; the beatnik movement in the 1950s. No one invented any of this. What was different in the 60s, according to Weiner, was that baby boomers were spoiled: plenty of education, money, entertainment; there was a war, but you could get out of it if you were lucky. This vision of unprecedented opportunity strikes me as fair;…
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…, in recent years, this sweeping illiberal agenda has weaponized religious freedom to promote a militant, literal, and illiberal Christian ideology that embraces Christianity as a bedrock American identity. This agenda not only claims a special place for religion in American culture but demands that the laws of the land be based on Christian morals, ethics, and history. In other words, it has its sights set on the rights and liberties not of relig…
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…ess by supporting organizations that “bear the common mission of advancing free enterprise and free societies.” The Saemans write that “promoting limited government alongside the Kochs is an important part of heeding Pope Francis’s call to love and serve the poor.” This despite Francis’ unequivocal statements almost exactly a year ago in opposition to the “free enterprise” ideology: “Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assum…
Read More…t of the religious right which deems it an unconstitutional restriction on free speech and religious freedom. The rule, it’s true, is rarely enforced by the IRS, as the memo notes. But if it’s repealed, and churches are free from the possibility of an IRS investigation for endorsing candidates, churches would become even more politicized, and free to use their tax-exempt status to do so. UPDATE: Michael Batts, who has been appointed to lead the EC…
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…of the city’s Tibetan refugee settlement, personalizing the struggle for Tibet’s freedom. “If I’m not doing anything, I shouldn’t call myself a Tibetan,” the young people told Raha. While uprisings in Tibet in the late 1980s inspired international solidarity movements among young Westerners, recent protests inside Tibet have galvanized a new generation of activists within the refugee community [See here for RD’s previous coverage]. The young refug…
Read More…imed at limiting the free distribution of Israel Hayom (Israel Today), the free newspaper owned by American casino magnate and Republican super-funder Sheldon Adelson. The same Sheldon Adelson who, at the inaugural meeting of the Israeli American Council in Washington on Sunday, said, “I don’t like journalism.” Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer explains the anti-Adelson bill that advanced today: The law, proposed by MK Eitan Cabel (Knesset) and sponsored b…
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…and plunging the country I love into a Great Depression, I’d happily die.” Better for a whole lot more people to suffer and die than for the free market to be stifled any further. It’s the economy, stupid! Given the prevalence of religious voices among support for Trump, perhaps we could think about our situation with the ethics of religious responsibly as outlined above. A simple translation of “restart the economy” suggests itself: the economy o…
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