Religion Dispatches
…ally the inaccurate descriptor. After all, Arizona already has a Religious Freedom Restoration Act; SB 1062’s supporters even described it as a way of closing that statute’s alleged “loopholes.” What’s more, since Arizona, unlike its neighbor New Mexico, doesn’t recognize sexual orientation as a protected class in its anti-discrimination laws, all the photographers and bakers and everyone else in Arizona were already perfectly free to turn LGBT pe…
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…y. Ephrem reminded Covenanters that foregoing sexual intimacy was meant to free them from themselves, not create a privileged class of Christians. ‘Without good deeds,’ he bluntly affirmed, ‘sexual renunciation is worthless.’ Ephrem’s insights could be arrestingly prescient. He warned that if celibacy were to become institutionalized in the church, it could result in great harm. Ambitious churchmen, he said, might use it as a stepping stone to pri…
Read More…eless fire. This is important because in Islamic cosmology, Angels have no free will: they can only obey Allah. The jinn, like the human creatures, do have free will and can disobey. This is different from the version of this story in Genesis, where there was “war in heaven” and the war was against God. We don’t have a God in such compromising positions. In the Qur’anic story, Satan disobeys and still knows that God is one. Think about that. It wa…
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…developments in Ecuador, Bolivia, and within the United Nations are as American as apple pie: they are to some extent in the spirit of a diverse range of American voices that led to the pioneering Endangered Species Act of 1973 signed into law by Richard Nixon. Yet today, those who call themselves conservative are generally hostile to environmentalists, often considering them to be politically or spiritually dangerous socialists or pagans. Unles…
Read More…s make against LGBT equality is that civil rights for LGBT people infringe on the religious freedom of Christians who believe homosexuality is sin. Therefore they insist the government shouldn’t give them, in Santorum’s words, “special privileges.” Conservatives frame this as a free exercise, or religious freedom issue, and, like Bachmann, skirt the church-state separation issue. Because these conservatives believe that the government should endor…
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…um Comedy is Not Pretty, Martin mockingly plays the role of a gadget-happy free-spender in search of the perfect sound system. “I bought a stereo. Wow—two speakers. Wild!” It was great for about a month, he says, until he heard the four-speaker “quad” system. “So I got rid of the stereo and got the quad. And this was the sound I was looking for. So I listened to it a couple of days and I said ‘Hey, this sounds like shit.’” He switches to the dodec…
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…ese performers sang Olympic pop promos and protesters waved signs reading “Free Tibet” and “Free Speech Now.” One man shouted, “Protect the First Amendment! This isn’t Communist China!” Police and park rangers tried convincing the protesters to leave the plaza and join the pro-Tibet contingent out in the street, but the protesters would not budge. Along the waterfront, the local chapter of Students for a Free Tibet drew huge crowds with their Chin…
Read More…ty of which I am a part, and I take serious exception to the institution’s free ride in the press. The complexity of contemporary Catholicism—especially the fact that millions of Catholics want a participatory, democratic, horizontally integrated church with broadly based non-clerical leadership—is newsworthy. Many such important issues, including the institution’s continued efforts to shape public policy on reproductive health, Catholic teachings…
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…sing from the use of this Service by anyone else. I’m not sure how much money the Information Age Prayer service has made or how many people would be stupid enough to pay for something they can hit their knees every day and do for free (heck, I do my best praying in the car – all for free!), but it seems to be a mark of today’s pay to play society. There’s no free lunch, not even with God, apparently. As a final sop, the IAP Web owners promise, th…
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…xactly what the Establishment Clause prohibits. The Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies emphasized the Free Exercise Clause and their own “religious freedom,” but they ignore, most certainly not by accident, the principle upon which Judge Stearns’ decision rests: “[t]o insist that the government respect the separation of church and state is not to discriminate against religion; indeed, it promotes a respect for religion by refusing to single ou…
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