Search Results for:

VIPREG2024 1xbet latest promo code Argentina

Surprising New Poll on Evangelicals and Religious Exceptions

Aghast (like you) in the face of the latest outbreaks of raw tribalism (an orchestrated tribalism, let us remember), I take considerable solace from any hint that Americans can still agree on commonsense principles that have in them at least an imputation of moral sensibility. Our friends at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) have just dropped the results of polling done in late August/early September (before the epochal Ford-Kavanaugh…

Read More

The Contraceptive Mandate and Animal Suffering

In his latest Project Syndicate column, ethicist Peter Singer takes a novel approach to religiously-based requests for exemptions from following laws that serve to relieve suffering. Singer compares the objections of Jewish and Muslim groups in the Netherlands to a law that would require all animals to be stunned before slaughter. These groups claim the law would limit their religious freedom by altering mandated slaughter rituals which require t…

Read More

LGBT Activists Challenge Church Anti-Marriage Efforts; Gov’t in Belize Creates Church-State ‘Public Morality’ Commission; Opponents Seek To Stop Finland’s Marriage Equality Law Before It Takes Effect; Global LGBT Recap

…ancis to dismiss Carinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, who activists accuse of “promoting hatred” against LGBT people. Other activists Belize: Government will challenge anti-sodomy-law ruling, create ‘public morality’ commission In the aftermath of a recent ruling by the country’s Chief Justice against the sodomy law, the government of Prime Minister Dean Barrow has agreed to set up a “church state commission on public morality” that will consider “how…

Read More

Note to the Tax-Slashers:
We Are Already Serfs

…that in the individual states now facing budget crises—Minnesota being the latest example—the dynamic is exactly the same as in Washington DC: Everyone must sacrifice to balance the budget except for the only people in society who have continued to do very well during the Great Recession: the top 20 percent and the top 5 percent in particular. My question is why there is still no significant religious component in movements like US Uncut, which or…

Read More

Fall to Your Knees for Bigotry

…ncil hopes to have 40,000 churches across the country participating in its latest PR scheme the “Call 2 Fall.” FRC president Tony Perkins says the day is set aside for Christians to “fall on their knees” in prayer for the country: Observances can take several forms, Perkins said, from a three- to five-minute period during a worship service when people would get on their knees and pray to a full day of praying and expressing dependence on God. Cert…

Read More

Tokyo Governor Says Tsunami is Divine Punishment—Religious Groups Ignore Him

…ovided relief to residents in Kobe, they are eager to help victims of this latest natural disaster. World Vision Japan is gathering relief funds and is working to aid victims; Caritas Japan, the Catholic charity, is gathering donations and working with dioceses to provide support in the afflicted region; the United Church of Christ is housing refugees in its Sendai churches; and the Salvation Army in Tokyo is gathering money and opened their doors…

Read More

Alabama Senate Considers Giving Church Its Own Police Force; Irony Reportedly Dead

…active Southern Baptist Bible Belt governor refuses to sign the thing. The latest attempt hasn’t made it to the new governor’s desk, and you might think that she wouldn’t want to approve it this early in her tenure, but astonishingly, it already wouldn’t even be the worst thing she signs. Via Charlie Pierce, we hear One of [Kay Ivey’s] first acts was to sign a bill removing judicial discretion in death penalty cases because nothing says, “Roll, Ti…

Read More

A History of the Unaffiliated: How the “Spiritual Not Religious” Gospel Has Spread

…hurch walls, and has for some time now. The “rise of the nones” is but the latest phase in the long transformation of religion into what we now commonly call “spirituality.” In my class on “Spirituality in America” at the University of Virginia, we use Leigh Schmidt’s pathbreaking Restless Souls to trace this phenomenon over two centuries, from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s break with New England Unitarianism in the 1830s to the multibillion dollar spirit…

Read More

Murder of Bangladeshi Girl Not Example of Shari’ah

The latest news out of Bangladesh is that a fatwa was issued for the caning of a 14 year-old girl, Mosammet Hena, because she had an affair with a married man. The girl was brutally beaten to death in this horrific crime. I can already see the way the AP is trying to frame the story as one of shari’ah gone wild. Let’s actually look at the facts of the case and how the Bangladeshis are reporting it. So-called shari’ah courts are banned in Banglade…

Read More

40% of Americans Still Believe in Creationism

…right direction, although the numbers remain depressing. According to the latest Gallup Poll, four out of ten Americans still believe that God created man in his image about 10,000 years ago: A small minority of Americans hold the “secular evolution” view that humans evolved with no influence from God—but the number has risen from 9% in 1982 to 16% today. At the same time, the 40% of Americans who hold the “creationist” view that God created huma…

Read More