Religion Dispatches
…ed out of the House Education Committee this week. It will now go to the House Calendar and Rules Committee for a vote before being introduced to the House floor. A companion bill, SB 893, remains in the Senate Education Committee. I wrote about the bill earlier this month here and here. As with most of the other anti-evolution bills that have been introduced this year in states across the country, the Tennessee legislation does not specifically m…
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…e: Ahmadis have a “glass ceiling” in the civil service, and discriminatory use of voter registration lists (Ahmadis are enrolled separately) keeps them from participation in elected government, even in areas where they are the overwhelming majority. From there it spreads through society in ways both perverse and corrupt, according to Ahmad: a non-Ahmadi colonel’s career is ended because his staff driver attended an Ahmadiyya mosque. Clergy can be…
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…ited Church of Christ youth gathering? Are we talking about a happy medium between these models? L: Well, not really. The politics were better for the most part, but the organizational structure had problems. I was on the planning committee and got to see behind the scenes. The event had little unified message, there was not a good structure for youth input, and the leader’s manual didn’t even include much about theology, which came off as lack of…
Read More…tatutory protections against religious discrimination or to create a broad free exercise right to receive government grants without complying with applicable regulations that protect taxpayers.” Last year, civil liberties groups lobbied hard to have a non-discrimination provision included in VAWA. The resulting statutory language reads: No person in the United States shall, on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin…
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…gressive Christian leaders like Rev. Barber, and there’s an odd disconnect between those stories and the stories focused on conservative, mostly white Christians/social conservatives. This is, perhaps, an interesting reflection of American polarization, but it doesn’t challenge the status quo. And I think it’s important to consider ways that we might push to change the national conversation in ways that would challenge the status quo. Even the cot…
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…Six—”The Brand”—but there’s no discussion of the work done to prop up and promote this charisma by the throngs of volunteers who provided free labor by serving the church as team members in worship; technology; media production; marketing and publicity; community groups; children’s ministry; women’s ministry; men’s ministry; security; building maintenance; facility multiplication; and hours spent outside of formal church service in a variety of w…
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…rchasing power and capital goods orders. While conservatives frequently accused these programs of being useless “make-work,” a waste of taxpayers’ money, the reality is just the opposite. Useful work which would not otherwise have been done literally changed the face of the country and provided a lasting legacy. Workers built and repaired 1 million miles of roads and 200,000 public facilities—including schools, playgrounds, courthouses, parks and…
Read More…your mortgage does NOT have to be paid off in order to go. People get confused by this, because one of the pre-conditions is that one must be debt-free. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an amount due against my credit card (or my mortgage, if I still had one), but it means I have keep my payments up in accordance to my agreements. No overdue amounts. I’ve done my mock packing. What is mock packing, you ask? Well, for this trip I have almost all new…
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…ets and advertisers all play with the tensions, conflicts and frustrations between black and white people. They use racial antagonism to boost ratings, to draw attention to their products and to keep viewers. We are constantly afflicted by the media with yet another “conversation” between opposing racial viewpoints that yields no light and generates no new ideas. Its only purpose is to increase our consumptive desire for more such interactions. We…
Read More…nsubstantiated claims such as “when you give money to groups that not only promote contraception but also promote abortion in an integrated way, you actually drive abortion rates up, not down.” Since 2000, Alvaré has taught law and brought her own brand of cherry-picked data tendentiously linked to the supposed dangers of abortion and contraception wrapped up as concern for women’s health and well-being to the Robert George/Witherspoon Institute/N…
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