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Bachmann Weaves Own Salvation Story into Christian Nation Mythology

…settling,” by knowing Jesus Christ “in his fullness” can someone be truly free, free in the way that Jesus intended when he “set captives free” by the founding of the country. It’s all wrong, of course, historically, constitutionally. But Bachmann found the precise sweet spot where testimony and Christian American exceptionalism mythology intersect. Bachmann took her speech even further, invoking the biblical story of Joshua and Caleb, who led a…

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Who’s to Blame for BP?

…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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There is No Religious Freedom: A Lesson from a ‘Pastafarian’ Stunt

…ve found another way. The solution is that no one is entitled to religious freedom because there is no such thing as religious freedom. Straining Credulity On what grounds could we conclude that the man in the pasta strainer deserves less deference from the state than the woman in the hijab or the man in the kippa? Is it that their faiths are “real,” and his fake? There are two ways that the state could judge that a faith is real as opposed to fak…

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Here’s What the Court Didn’t Decide in ‘Masterpiece Cakeshop’

…sons” and, on the other, “the right of all persons to exercise fundamental freedoms,” including the free exercise of religion. And therein lies a second, likely much less welcome upshot for gay rights advocates. Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court argued that the Civil Rights Commission unfairly treated Phillips in two ways. His first argument, that the commission permitted other bakeries to refuse service to customers who wished to commission…

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How Breivik’s “Cultural Analysis” is Drawn from the “Christian Worldview”

…, Western, Judeo-Christian culture is collapsing. It is not collapsing because it failed. On the contrary it has given us the freest and most prosperous society in human history. Rather, it is collapsing because we are abandoning it.” And then: b. ASK: What could cause such a dramatic and widespread shift in perspective? (Cultural radicals, people who hate our Judeo-Christian culture, are driving this change.) c. TRANSITION: To fully understand th…

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International ‘Pro-Family’ Summit Calls for New Anti-Gay Laws: Global LGBT Recap

…church adopt a more conciliatory approach to same-sex marriages, but the House of Bishops refused to back formal blessings, and forbade gay clergy from marrying. Ireland: Bishop Questions Catholic Group’s Donation to LGBT Center The Independent reported last week that Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan sent a letter to the Society of St Vincent de Paul “demanding clarification as to the grounds” of a donation made by the group to “a Galway LGBT group…

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Challenge to ‘un-Africanness’ of homosexuality; LGBT Catholics in Africa face church cooperation with persecution; lesbian cartoon project debuts in bangladesh under shadow of violence; Global LGBT Recap

…us law against LGBT people in the modern world; and that President Yoweri Museveni used in a ceremonial signing of the anti-gay bill in Uganda. This year Gambia’s president Yahya Jammeh called for gay people’s throats to be slit. Alimi says it was a huge task to prepare to teach a course on pre- and post-colonial sexual orientation and sexual identity in Africa. In digging up facts I found that, while many Africans say that homosexuality is un-Afr…

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Orthodox Church’s Authoritarian Anti-LGBTQ Statement Poses Serious Threat to Academic Freedom

…he OCA, the Synod of Bishops have the authority to restrict their right to free academic speech and thought. Academic freedom, which was arguably founded in Medieval Christianity, has always been subject to institutional affiliation. But the OCA document doesn’t specify who might be at risk. Does it pertain to OCA lay members employed at institutions and/or writing academic articles for publications unaffiliated with the OCA? There is (or at least…

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Corporations, Religious Conscience, Citizens United, and Contraception

…ligious 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 is not prevented from keeping the Sabbath, from providing a religiou…

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Mark Twain’s Blasphemy

…wner. At the most pragmatic level, the entire narrative of Jim’s quest for freedom is an exercise in redundancy. There are no lessons for liberation here. What may be most useful about reading, carefully reading, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn today is the deep skepticism that the book expresses about turning to the past for examples of virtue. Twain understood the pleasures that his readers took in a history that was more mythic than actual,…

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