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Paul Weyrich, “Godfather” of Modern Conservative Movement, Dead at 66

By Bill Berkowitz

…when the first verdict is in.” His last open column, dated Thursday at the Free Congress Foundation, the organization he founded and was CEO of was titled: “The Next Conservatism, A Serious Agenda for the Future.” Weyrich wrote: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It is the worst of times because millions of Americans are unemployed this Christmas. It is the worst of years because we have mortgaged the future of our children and…

Discrimination on the Taxpayer’s Dime? The Fight To Curtail the Overreach of RFRA

By Sarah Posner

…Hobby Lobby—where the Court noted that even if women could not obtain cost-free contraception coverage through their employer’s health plan, they could still purchase contraception—unaccompanied immigrant children in custody don’t have that freedom. In addition, Hamilton said, “rape is different” from access to contraception. “Courts have not had a chance to do the weighing of a victim of sexual assault versus the religious claims of an organizati…

Angels & Demons: America’s Preeminent Pop Theologian Takes on Religion and Science

By Nathan Schneider

…ough our religious imagination, one that could embrace a revolution led by Freemasons and uncover new scriptures written on secret golden plates. Free from the burden of Europe’s institutional rivalries, it has always refused to see scientific reason as a threat to faith. In the 19th century, it gave birth to “metaphysical” movements like Christian Science and spiritualism, which staked a claim to science convincing enough to attract the interest…

Faith in the Future is No Faith at All: Disney’s Weak Theology

By Scott MacDougall

…d technology, such thinking went, humanity would be able to create a world free from want, disease, ignorance, and inequality—maybe even from death itself. Christian theologians like Edward Schillebeeckz, Johann Baptist Metz, and Jürgen Moltmann began to question the revived myth of human progress embedded in this futurological view. How, they asked, does a future that arises solely out of present circumstances produce anything other than more of…

It’s Only a Game: How Not to Think about Video Game Violence

By Joanna Brooks

…ntonin Scalia presented the 7-2 ruling as a defense of free speech and the free circulation of ideas. That’s been a consistent theme for the Roberts court, which in recent years has in the name of freedom of speech legalized the sale of animal torture videos and struck down limits on corporate political spending on the grounds that corporations have free speech rights too. But in his dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer asked, “What sense do…

Rebuilding the Wall of Separation: A Progressive Discussion on Church & State

By Bruce Ledewitz

…ar. When Thomas Jefferson first proposed the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1777, he stated that this right of individual conscience must be extended to everyone, including: “the Jew, the Mohametan, and the Hindoo.” Jefferson was not arguing the demographics of majority and minority religions, but first principles. It took time to advance them, even then. James Madison as governor of Virginia managed to push Jefferson’s bill through the…

The Next Islamists: The Wide Green Smudge That’s Changing Our World

By Haroon Moghul

…l part because America is not the threat it once was. When, on July 17, Ayatollah Rafsanjani rose to deliver his long-awaited Friday sermon, some of his supporters responded to Basiji chants of “Death to America” with counter-chants of “Death to Russia.” If Islam can mean democracy, then the enemy of Islam is not the West. Members of the Green Movement asked why Iran’s Islamic government cares so passionately for Palestinians, but refuses to exten…

Kuwait “Morals Committee” Announced Deportation of 76 Gay Men; and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…just laws wherever there is a Christian presence because ‘Until we are all free, we are none of us free.’” Anglican Communion: Gay couple’s church wedding expected to rile Communion’s conservatives The first wedding by a same-sex couple in an Anglican Church in Britain is expected to further exacerbate tensions within the Anglican Communion. Excerpts from The Guardian’s Cathering Pepinster reporting: The first gay Anglican wedding in Britain took…

Image of Hubert Aiwanger, Bavaria's deputy premier speaking at a podium.

Holocaust Humor and The ‘Real’ Germany — As Top Officials Shatter Post-WWII Taboos, German Conservatives Follow GOP Playbook and Charge Ahead

By Annika Brockschmidt

…e massively and to destroy me politically. This was intended to weaken the Free Voters and steer votes to other parties,” he says in an interview with the conservative newspaper Die Welt. He also describes the reporting as “bumbling and a bottomless meanness,” and reinforced the message via Twitter, writing, “Smear campaigns backfire in the end. #Aiwanger.” [sic] Unfathomably, he seems to be right about one thing: the allegations, reported and fac…

A Hidden Amy Coney Barrett Answer on COVID That Should Scare Every American

By Andrew L. Seidel

…public health restrictions on places of worship. Do states infringe on the free exercise of religion when they selectively restrict a religious gathering as a matter of enforcement discretion? RESPONSE: The Supreme Court has explained that “[o]fficial action that targets religious conduct for distinctive treatment cannot be shielded by mere compliance with the requirement of facial neutrality” and that “[t]he Free Exercise Clause protects against…