Religion Dispatches
…s become an important community for them. “It has now become more acceptable for people to state that they are questioning or no longer religious” says Hashman. “We are dedicated to free inquiry and freedom of expression, and that can come off as abrasive, but we believe it necessary for a free and democratic society.”…
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…t of environmentalists, a clip from the O.J. Simpson trial, footage from a free yoga class in Union Square, and bulleted lists about the medicinal uses of hallucinogenic drugs. Filmmaker David Lynch describes how he first started meditating; actress Ellen Page reminisces about the month she spent “shoveling goat shit” at an eco-village following the release of Juno. One of the more interesting interviews in the film is with mycologist Paul Stamets…
Read More…avention of their own religious beliefs, they are required to support the “free exercise of religion” of all servicemembers and their families, and enter service with the knowledge that they will serve “a religiously diverse population.” In any case, if there is disproportionate opposition to repeal among chaplains, it’s a trend that was created by the effort to recruit evangelical chaplains who opposed open service by gays and lesbians. If it’s u…
Read More…ionally impossible to grant same-sex marriage rights and protect religious freedom. But then George does some more verbal gymnastics to try to claim that granting equal rights to gay and lesbian couples somehow constitutes an imposition of “state religion” on religious opponents of same-sex marriage—a bizarre formulation of the Establishment Clause. He concludes: Surely we can find a way not to play off newly invented individual rights to “marriag…
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…g meals or the “click, click, click” of the computer mouse in response to “free shipping!” “40 % off!” or “Buy one get one free!” in the United States, we are gluttonous consumers of material goods (and food, but that is a whole other subject). The value and consequences of shopping in dominant US culture puts the consumer on a roller-coaster ride. One year we are told that excessive, unwise spending and its resultant debt have led our country int…
Read More…long line which have gradually morphed church-state separation cases into free speech cases — for Christians, that is. In other words, whereas courts used to determine whether religious action (such as use of public school resources for a Bible club) would constitute government endorsement of religion, religious right legal advocacy has altered the jurisprudence to evaluate such questions based on whether the school’s exclusion of the Bible club…
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…ates, self-contain’d, different from others, more expansive, more rich and free, to be evidenced by original authors and poets to come, by American personalities, plenty of them, make and female, traversing the states, none excepted… and by a sublime and serious Religious Democracy sternly taking command, dissolving the old, sloughing off the surfaces, and from its own interior and vital principles reconstructing, democratizing society. A religio…
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…le was emphatic that Christianity was the one thing standing in the way of free market capitalism taking over the United States and ruining the morals of the citizens. He saw Christianity as providing a check on market logics. There have been times when certain forms of Christianity—that of the Transcendentalists in the 1830s and 40s, for instance—exhibited the potential for a gospel of debt forgiveness to stand in opposition to the free market. B…
Read More…, not a religious rights issue, but it gets to one of the complications of free exercise rights. Some areas of law operate vertically, let’s say, since they’re mostly self-referential and one can acquire expertise in them without much reference to other areas of law. But religious rights work horizontally, as they come into interaction, and conflict, with many other categories of law. And it’s impossible to be expert in all types of law, even for…
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…under the First Amendment. We think it’s time for us all to seek religious freedom for reproductive freedom, and to recognize that persistent efforts to interfere in reproductive decisions is “an infringement of a natural right” in the sense the Virginia Statute warned. Of course, women didn’t share in this natural right at the time—but the right to believe differently than the rich and the powerful as codified in the Statute and the First Amendme…
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