Religion Dispatches
…ys that he and other board members weren’t trying to ignore slavery as a cause of the Civil War. “There were multiple causes,” he said. Davis’ address, which reads eerily like a Tea Party manifesto, never mentions slavery, but the board makes no mention of teaching its own state’s Ordinance of Secession, which states: (Texas) was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of…
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…We are Jewish Jerusalemites—residents by choice of a battered city, a city used and abused, ransacked time and again first by foreign conquerors and now by its own politicians. We cannot recognize our city in the sentimental abstraction you call by its name. Our Jerusalem is concrete, its hills covered with limestone houses and pine trees; its streets lined with synagogues, mosques, and churches. Your Jerusalem is an ideal, an object of prayers an…
Read More…, critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.” As always, since intelligent design was ruled unconstitutional in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the introduced bills rely on such creationist code words as “teaching the controversy,” “academic freedom,” or “critical analysis.” However, in the case of Florida, the bill’s sponsoring lawmaker Rep…
Read More…to determine the constitutionality of section 293 of the Canadian Criminal Code, which criminalizes the practice of polygamy, in light of sections of the Canadian Charter of Freedom pertaining to religious and civil liberties. Polygamy-practicing Mormons began fleeing to Mexico and Canada in the 1880s, after US Supreme Court Justices upheld the conviction of George Reynolds on polygamy charges in 1879, declaring polygamy an “odious” “Asiatic” prac…
Read More…for being gay. A straight, unmarried couple left, she said, after they refused to live apart: “They understood what they had agreed to and they dropped out.” Alum Melissa Durkee said it’s hard to know what the school might consider “practice.” “Is ‘homosexual practice’ holding hands? A stray look or touch? Dating?” Gays and lesbians have good reason to be suspicious, even when those who ban “homosexual practices” begin to apologize. Apologizing f…
Read More…ose either secretly or overtly a Taliban-like, religious, strict religious code upon all Americans, which is ridiculous.” Honor killings, forced marriages, female genital mutilation, and other abuses are “un-Islamic,” he said, adding that there is “no debate among serious Muslim scholars about that.” As far as fear-mongering that that Muslims seek to supplant the Constitution with shari’ah, Khan noted, “there is room for individual religious pract…
Read More…h” and “stealth jihad” cottage industry, but within that world it has been used to create a mythology around a supposedly global plot. That document lies at the heart of the Clarion Fund’s film “The Third Jihad,” which claims, preposterously, that a fifth column of jihadists aims to institute shari’ah law (described inaccurately in the film as honor killings and beheadings of non-Muslims) in the United States. The star of the film, Zuhdi Jasser, i…
Read More…addition to being a spiritual exercise the Vigil was also a good way to “house” a lot of people without running into fire code violations. I could not find any other religious events advertised. Could it be that people of other faiths simply held private devotions? Perhaps, but more likely the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and their friends were the major sponsors of the whole weekend but just w…
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…n, and demanded that girls style their hair wavy—not straight or curly—because “wavy hair is attractive and becoming—it causes you to focus on the woman’s face instead of her body.” Gothard’s approved wavy hairstyle is meant, she said, “to attract men to your bright eyes, which will attract them to God, instead of your body.” Eliza elaborated on how she was required to live under her father’s authority, even in adulthood. “Girls should be serving…
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…few days ago. For these reasons and others it is doubtful if the PPP will use the death of Taseer as a rallying point to reclaim Pakistani civil society and promote a rebirth of the liberal values that Jinnah, the Qaid-e-Azam or Great Leader, articulated after the birth of the nation. Indeed, several ministers interviewed in the press seemed to distance themselves from Taseer’s courageous position on the blasphemy law, recognizing that General Zi…
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