Religion Dispatches
…non-Muslims in order to expand Muslim realms while observing humanitarian codes of conduct against civilians is more or less accepted as a given, even by many specialists of Islam. The proof-texts invoked in support of such a position are medieval Islamic legal texts, which frequently did list such a requirement as part of the duties of the Muslim ruler and established furthermore an elaborate code of conduct for initiating war. And this is where…
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…r life, respect for property, sobriety, etc. all seem identical to Western codes of conduct, they arise differently in Buddhism. The Decalogue was revealed by divine commandment. In Buddhism, there’s no creator deity. Nor is there any central Buddhist institution, such as a Vatican. Rather, in establishing one of humanity’s first monastic orders, the Buddha set forth a matrix and process of conscious behavior (vinaya) based on actual conduct. As s…
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…of Californians to heed one element in an otherwise obscure list of purity codes in Deuteronomy—and that Jesus’ preaching in the gospels isn’t really complete without Paul’s finger-wagging in Romans—the stitching that holds together the disparate parts of the Good Book will have subtly but irrevocably loosened, along with the Bible’s centuries-old grip on American public life. Of course, religious conservatives can’t frame their proposed amendment…
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…terested in being “open” to one another than in enforcing absolutist moral codes. Only amid such a morally aimless polity could same-sex marriage find such broad acceptance. Having dispensed with old moral absolutes, Craig argues, Americans have adopted what he calls the “new absolutes,” referring to values such as tolerance, openness, and “non-judgmentalism.” Since these values have replaced more traditional values, concerns over the moral qualit…
Read More…iety and for an individual’s own intellectual growth. But what about honor codes that many universities impose? These are usually attempts to regulate behavior—not thought. They attempt to prohibit, for example, alcohol and pot in student dorms. Prohibitions against thinking, against ideas that are counter to administrators’ beliefs, however, should have no place in a university. Although I am not an expert in issues of religious freedom in Americ…
Read More…g for years requirements that he abide by basic building, fire, and zoning codes. So you go back to that Charisma story and the overblown rhetoric about religious persecution, and remind yourself not to take seriously the next thing you read or hear from the Rutherford Institute. And while you can’t be sure, you don’t recall reading that the heat and harsh conditions at Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County Tent City Jail had previously moved John…
Read More…at all. During and after Reconstruction, there is no mention of the Black Codes, the Ku Klux Klan, or sharecropping; the term “Jim Crow” never appears. Incredibly, racial segregation is only mentioned in a passing reference to the 1948 integration of the armed forces. Or this section: Texas’s heavily politicized 2010 revisions to its social studies curriculum have attracted massive national attention. Indeed, both in public hearings and press int…
Read More…F’s view, cannot coexist with its version of Christianity. Anti-harassment codes at schools and universities, gay rights events, and other expressions of freedom or equal rights for LGBT people, necessarily silence Christians, who, ADF insists, are biblically compelled to condemn homosexuality. The “homosexual agenda,” then, is ipso facto anti-Christian. Alan Sears, ADF’s president, told the Family Research Council’s Values Voters Summit last fall…
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…puses in Provo, Utah, Rexburg, Idaho, and Laie, Hawaii have long had dress codes requiring students to dress conservatively, prohibiting shorts, skin-baring cropped tops, and “form-fitting clothing.” The popularity of leggings, jeggings, and skinny jeans (even Mitt Romney has a pair) has produced new attention in LDS communities to how those dress code boundaries are enforced and who bears the brunt of the enforcement. Beginning in November, the B…
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…ort their position by reading closely and deeply the same Talmud and legal codes that you do. Their community embodies an extreme yet also consistent rendering of Judaism founded on the Talmud and the legal tradition it generated. It is true that their egregious behavior steps beyond any acceptable norm. But their more general interpretation of Jewish law does not. Shouldn’t recent incidents serve to show that your anti-misogynist Orthodoxy, which…
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