Religion Dispatches
…bout promoting tobacco in countries which had no or few regulations on the promotion or use of tobacco products. In fact, the documents show that this was the clear objective of American tobacco companies who were facing declining sales at home due to increased government regulations and scrutiny. Romney has spoken of his personal disdain for tobacco, revealing that in his entire life he smoked only one cigarette—when he was a teenager. Growing up…
Read More…to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to—to use their religion to hurt others. It’s simply a factual statement followed by an anodyne opinion. I don’t think people should use their religion to hurt others, either. Does that make me a bigot? The broader point here is that Kennedy’s reasoning is simply incoherent. There is no way for government to remain “strictly neutral” when it comes to religious values. B…
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…th-based institutions explicitly subject” to California non-discrimination codes. Of course, that’s because non-faith-based institutions are already subject to the state and federal anti-discrimination laws. “The targets of this bill are religious colleges and universities, but the true victims of this legislation would be the innocent students,” wrote California Assemblyman Matthew Harper early last month. Since the anti-discrimination requiremen…
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…humanity itself. Brown not only claims that the Pope didn’t specifically use the words “gay marriage,” he says that there wasn’t even the suggestion “that gay marriage was the most important of these [policies that threaten the family] and he didn’t mention it at all.” Really? Immediately following his naming of the family as the most important setting for the education of young people, the pope defines family as being “based on the marriage of…
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…r telling time and making measurements by the sun or stars. You could even use it to calculate the circumference of the earth, which Gerbert and his peers knew very well was not flat like a disc but round as an apple. Much of this science Gerbert learned as a youth living on the border of Islamic Spain, then an extraordinarily tolerant culture in which learning was prized. Born a peasant in the mountains of France in the mid-900s, Gerbert entered…
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…‘elder brother’—Esau—is also the brother who gets rejected. One can still use it, because it expresses an important point. But it is true that they are also our ‘fathers in the faith.’ And this way of putting it illustrates perhaps even more clearly the character of our relationship to each other. Still, in regard to what may be the most contentious issue of all—the beatification process for Pope Pius XII, who reigned during the Holocaust—Benedic…
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…rent goal: restoration. “If you think restoration is impossible that’s because you’re lazy because you’re not willing to read, you don’t read books.” Echoing DeMuth’s concerns about “fertility,” Hazony speaks directly to the—largely male—audience: Young men: get a young woman, join a church, go to a place where the great inheritance is being handed down, […] or join a synagogue. If there is no church like that in your state, move to a different st…
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…ing in the Capitol has been alleged to be a “cult.” However, these are diffuse movements, not insulated, totalistic communities. “Cult” used in this manner is constructed to refer to the worst characteristics that people can imagine, which is what Yale historian Joanne Freeman did in a June 22, 2021 podcast with Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson (no relation to James T. Richardson) when Freeman stated that members of a “cult” believe…
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…ear. The Islamic State began in 2004 as al-Qaeda’s Iraq affiliate, not because its then-leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, discovered that female motorists populate America’s highways, but because America had just invaded Iraq. We can and must fight back against ISIL. We have a moral obligation, not to mention a national security obligation. But we must be careful in that response that we do not fall prey to ideas that have already failed before (and i…
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…y minority opinion. Michael Peroutka didn’t miss out on the presidency because his supporters were ghettoized. He lost because a whole lot of people wanted someone else to be president instead of Peroutka. And having a minority opinion can be, you know, fine! I’ve been told I hold many such opinions myself. But it’s a little bit disingenuous to then say, “What’s this? My uncompromising belief in something almost nobody else believes or comprehe…
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