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Billy Graham Was More Like White America’s Surrogate Savior Than “America’s Pastor”

By Peter Laarman

…newly converted to be properly churched: he did not hoard them (and their dollars) for himself in the manner of an Oral Roberts or a Jimmy Swaggart or a Joel Osteen. Toward the end of his very long life—and insofar as he could still actually speak for himself and not be used as a sock puppet by the nefarious Franklin—Billy Graham apparently mellowed on two crucial fronts: whether nonbelievers are consigned to hell, and whether God could possibly…

The Tragedy of Religious Freedom

By Patrick Hornbeck

…entities who benefit (say, via tax-exempt status or federal financial aid dollars) from a society within which they sit that does not necessarily recognize their authority or values. Courts have traditionally been reluctant to intervene in churches’ internal affairs and have tended to take churchly assertions of belief and identification at face value, lest judges find themselves in the uncomfortable (and likely unconstitutional) predicament of a…

SCOTUS Refusal Again Favors Religious Claims… But This Time in Liberals’ Favor

By Patrick Hornbeck

…urch in the Diocese of South Carolina” must return close to half a billion dollars in properties to the Episcopal Church. The issue in the case was highly technical, centering on whether a denomination’s internal governance procedures can have the effect of creating a property trust even when the church procedures don’t satisfy the state’s usual requirements for forming a trust. For context, it’s worth remembering that the Supreme Court grants rev…

The Forgotten Struggle Over Gender and Bigotry in Christianity

By Stephen J. Patterson

…teenth century, now has fewer than a million members. Today the Mormons outnumber the church of the Pilgrims seven to one—and the Mormons are not ordaining any women. The church is the last institution in America where it is still legal to discriminate on the basis of gender. So, an ancient Christian credo declaring solidarity across ethnic lines, class division, and gender difference sounded a little unbelievable to someone who had come to see th…

Should Satanic Temple Have Threatened Netflix Over Baphomet Statue in ‘Sabrina’ Series?

By Joseph Laycock

…any money (or even having much fun). The Temple owes tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and holds regular fundraising events to stay afloat. Generally, they don’t sue for financial damages, only injunctions compelling the defendants to treat them equally. A demand letter to Netflix and Warner Brothers from Temple lawyer Stu de Haan simply requested that the statue be removed from the show and expressed hope that this could be resolved wit…

In Convention Event Democrats Embrace the ‘Nones’

By Chrissy Stroop

…lermo Smith of Florida, who, focusing in particular on the use of taxpayer dollars to fund fundamentalist schools that teach “alternative facts,” called his state “a case study in what can go wrong [when the Christian Right is in power].” The prominence of red state activists and politicians in the program comports both with the sense that they’re on the “front lines” of the Christian Right’s culture warring, a point stressed by both Salman and Sm…

Supreme Court Conservatives Allow Execution of Muslim Prisoner Despite Religious Freedom Violation

By Andrew L. Seidel

…e court will decide that the government can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars displaying and maintaining a 40-foot concrete cross on government property. The cross was rededicated as a war memorial to all service members in 1985, but it is a cross. It’s the symbol of one religion. In other words, if it’s a memorial, it’s a memorial to Christian soldiers only. It ignores the service of Jews, Hindus, Muslims, humanists, agnostics, and atheists….

SCOTUS Likely to Support Memorial Cross; Should We Even Care?

By Andrew L. Seidel

…rete cross is crumbling. The government has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair it over the years, but it’s cracked and on the verge of collapse. In that respect, it’s a bit like the metaphorical wall of separation between church and state. Every court to decide on such a cross has said that it must come down or be moved to private property. That’s because crosses are the quintessential symbol of Christianity; indeed, when the town fi…

Trump’s CPAC Meltdown Wasn’t Just Comedy Gold, It Was Groundbreaking Extremism

By Becky Garrison

…eges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research dollars.” This move seems to signify Falwell will remain loyal given Trump will allow Christian schools to ignore SCOTUS rulings such as Bob Jones University v. United States (1982), a battle that launched the Moral Majority founded by his father. This ruling denied tax exemptions to religious institutions that practiced racial discrimination, which, they claimed, was a rel…

Anti-Choice Groups Prove It’s Not Just About Abortion Anymore

By Patricia Miller

…is pregnancy counseling centers to capture patients and public health care dollars, has agreed to refer for contraception in order to quality for $5.1 million in federal Title X funding for its Southern California clinics. LifeSiteNews reports that it was tipped off by anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson (who’s the subject of the anti-Planned Parenthood movie Unplanned) that Obria CEO Kathleen Eaton Bravo met recently with officials from the U.S….