Religion Dispatches
…tes throughout secular democratic Europe. Article 226b of the Danish Penal Code, for instance, singles out for protection—among other categories—groups of people who “on account of their faith” are threatened, insulted, or degraded. It does not single out people, regardless of their affiliation, on account of their convictions of conscience. Know Thy Enmity The most principled motivation for hate speech laws can be found in the principle of equal…
Read More…nt introduced legislation that would ban medical procedures for gender reassignment as well as any legal recognition of gender change or transgender status. The language used by the parliamentarians echoes anti-transgender language used by religious conservatives who refer to gender reassignment surgery as “mutilation” and insist that a strict biological binary supports the principle of “complementarity” between the sexes. Estonia: Court overturns…
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…ical community, one that represents not simply a broader agenda but also a significantly different spirit and worldview. Last week, Dr. David Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University and author of The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center, talked compellingly about the arrival of the evangelical center at a standing-room-only presentation at Third Way, a progre…
Read More…views on everyone else, but make sure they’re free to mock that very moral code. Democrats fear that argument. That’s why their approach has been, especially since about 2006 or so, to try to make themselves out to be the “authentic” Christians who truly care about their neighbors and all that. The Aqua Buddha ad may have been a bad strategic move in Kentucky; we’ll never really know. But Conway — without, as far as I can tell, invoking treacly re…
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…dictates of the prophetic voice through a regimented system of behavior: a code of conduct thoroughly imbued with an ethos and a morality. The most articulate condemnations of torture that Judaism has to offer are therefore presented most effectively as deeply spiritual legal analyses. The best of these, in recent years, was composed by Rabbi Melissa Weintraub for Rabbis for Human Rights, an international organization focusing on a number of progr…
Read More…hrough the gate leading to the water, one must punch in a combination pass code. The town’s elegantly manicured gardens belie its state’s housing market collapse. But just outside of town, realtors advertise “Free Foreclosure Lists!” Sitting along a commons of lush grass, an attractive young couple casually dressed in designer sunglasses, khakis, and expensive sandals led a group of fair-haired children in prayer. The young blond woman urged the c…
Read More…d back in 2014, defended itself by invoking section 18 of the Human Rights code, which allows a religious group to restrict participation to the faithful. So while AA presents itself to the public as a “spiritual” program, distinguishing itself from “religious” groups, it nevertheless claimed “religious” legal status in order to protect itself. Although the definition of “religion” is generally assumed in common parlance, it is not in any sense ea…
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…is strongly attached to his homeland.’’ But Epstein’s project was not to assign blame. He wrote, ‘‘The Zionists’ lack of attention to an issue so basic to their settlement is not intentional; it went unnoticed because they were not familiar with the country and its inhabitants, and furthermore, had no national or political awareness.’’ Now that Zionist settlement had grown (in the twenty-five years preceding his 1907 essay), Epstein called on the…
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…. But what’s gone largely unnoticed are efforts, by this, perhaps the most significant religious movement of the 21st century, to train people to infiltrate election offices as election workers. NAR connected organization Lion of Judah came to national attention last summer at an event in Wisconsin when its leader, Jacob Caleb Standifer, told the crowd that when the polls closed, they wanted Christians to be among those counting the votes: You are…
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…Roman officials smiled on her. While variety is good, efforts like this to promote one way to be religious and eclipse go against the grain. Feminine Genius or Feminist Genius? A close look at the text leaves me disconcerted on three additional fronts. First, there is the essentialism. Women’s “feminine genius” is a patriarchal fiction. Yet, it is trotted out time and again by Pope Francis and those who would curry his favor. In this report, “comp…
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