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‘Landmark’ Speech From LDS Leader on LGBTQ Rights and Religious Freedom Was More Like a Sunnier Groundhog Day

By Aly Marino

…s later, “sen[d] seismic waves through the Mormon community,” with its new policy barring the children of married gay parents from membership or baptism. In a speech now scrubbed from an official LDS website, Elder D. Todd Christofferson called same-sex marriage “a particularly grievous…sin that requires Church discipline.” In other words, the legacy media hasn’t historically been the most astute critics. The truth is, Oaks has been preaching esse…

Quaker Loses Job Over “Loyalty Oath”

By Peter Montgomery

…ir objections yet still sign the pledge. But not Cal State. Here’s the new policy regarding the oath requirement that is proposed in the letter from People For’s Legal Director Judith E. Schaeffer: CSU recognizes that some of our employees may have religious or other objections to taking this oath. It is our policy to accommodate the religious and other beliefs of our employees by allowing an employee to append an explanatory statement to the empl…

Why is the State Department Opening an Office of “Religious Engagement”?

By Austin Dacey

…rmal discussion forum that was to become known as the Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group. Last October, the working group submitted a white paper (posted by working group member Chris Seiple) proposing a permanent institution housed at State. “In many places around the world,” begins the Background and Rationale section, understanding religion is imperative to understanding the local civil society. Gallup polls show that four out of five p…

LDS Church Labels Same-Sex Spouses “Apostates,” Bars Children From Baptism

By Joanna Brooks

…f children. LDS Church leaders explained Friday that the controversial new policy, modeled on the Church’s treatment of polygamous families and their children, is designed to “protect” children of LGBT parents from experiencing “conflict,” a claim that some Mormons and many non-LDS people have found it difficult to accept. If protecting the children is a concern for the LDS Church, it might attempt the following: Affirm immediately that all childr…

LDS Church Acknowledges Past Racism, Repudiates Racist Remarks

By Joanna Brooks

…a collective process of “repentance”: “An unwillingness to call the former policy racist and, therefore, wrong, unjustified, harmful, un-Christian, and indefensibly regrettable is, however subtly, still fundamentally racist. The priesthood/temple ban is, at present, not just a symptom of a racist past. It is a thorn in the side, an unhealed open wound on the body of a still racist present. And the sooner we can collectively realize that our unwill…

Immigration Reform According to Ralph Reed’s Bible

By Peter Montgomery

…how to apply his interpretation of other biblical themes to very specific policy details: In Scripture, the obligation to care for the alien carries a corollary responsibility for the immigrant to obey the law and respect national customs. In the Old Testament, immigrants who followed the law shared in the inheritance of Israel. Amnesty violates this principle. Those who have come to the U.S. illegally must reform: Pay fines and back taxes, under…

Shari’ah is Coming to America According to Conservative ‘Team B’

By Hussein Rashid

…oaching the same issue from different perspectives to create a more robust policy. Looking at the make-up of this Team B, I’m not sure they even qualify as third-string JV in the world of professional policy work. Sheila Musaji does an extensive breakdown of the members of Team B. There are some highlights from a team that did not include any scholars in the field of Islamic Studies (I don’t see a problem with no Muslims being included, like Matt…

Battling for the Soul of the Democratic Party

By Sarah Posner

…d, the liberal Center for American Progress set up a Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative, which for a time housed what later became the nonprofit Faith in Public Life (FIPL). With former Democratic party staffer Katie Paris leading its media outreach, FIPL is in the forefront of those shaping the media narrative about the new religious landscape: religious voters are no longer shackled to a “narrow agenda” of abortion and gay marriage, and are…

Protesting Yoga in Schools, But Welcoming Bible Study

By Katherine Stewart

…e Christian proselytism that is already making deep inroads into public education. *This article originally identified the National Center for Law & Policy as the National Center for Policy and Law. RD regrets the error. …

Schools Should Compete for Cash, Obama Says

By Peter Laarman

…ven reminiscent of the successful campaign by financial elites to “update” United States trade policy during the Clinton years. They pushed through the NAFTA and WTO agreements even though millions of working-class Democrats and thousands of US manufacturing centers were cruelly slaughtered along the way. That carnage is by now very well documented. With a handful of exceptions, neither Mexican workers nor US workers received any benefits at all f…