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“We All We Got”: The Black Church As an Oasis in Baltimore’s Food Deserts

By Kasai Rex

…nd their well-being at heart. With thousands of children going without the free or reduced lunches they depended on for a midday meal, it was a handful of churches and members of the community that would feed them breakfast and lunch. Meanwhile, national chain luxe-grocer Whole Foods would instead provide food for the National Guardsmen deployed by Republican Gov. Larry Hogan to “maintain order.” People of color in cities such as Baltimore or Flin…

Is Accreditation of Religious Institutions a “Farce”?

By Eric C. Miller

…oard of overstepping the First Amendment and infringing on their rights to free religious exercise and free speech.” Among the colleges and seminaries that spurn regional accreditation, many justify their decision by citing freedom from governmental oversight, a position compatible with the conservative mentality often dominant at such institutions. Ideologically consistent, this claim has the ancillary benefit of helping its makers dodge the cost…

The Islamophobia Dodge of the Religious Freedom Pledge

By Sarah Posner

…s money so “You can send light to dark places in the Muslim World.” You’re free to be Muslim, but it would be better to be Christian. What’s more, though, is how Christian candidates who’ve done much to promote a lack of religious freedom for other religions (e.g., Michele Bachmann’s worry that sharia will “usurp the Constitution” or Newt Gingrich’s calls to ban sharia law because it is “a comprehensive political, economic and religious movement t…

A Love Letter to #Exvangelicals and Those Deconstructing Their Toxic Faith

By Andrew L. Seidel

…icals could contribute to in other ways: the Secular Student Alliance, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Black Nonbelievers, the American Humanist Association, Hispanic American Freethinkers, American Atheists, the Center for Inquiry, Ex-Muslims of North America, and many more, including hundreds of amazing local groups that offer a more intimate and familiar community. Many of these local groups, such as the Atheist Community of Polk County (…

Hitching a Freedom Ride: Gay Ain’t the New Black…

By Jonathan L. Walton

…scrimination in previous epochs resists hackneyed comparisons to the black freedom struggle by those advocating other issues, regardless of how right or just these issues may be. At the same time, we all must acknowledge that civil rights transcend the African American community. Black folks hardly have a monopoly on Constitutional protections. Civil rights are, in theory, afforded to all citizens. The will of a majority can never impinge upon the…

“Even the Rich Suffer”: An Interview with Google’s Jolly Good Fellow Chade-Meng Tan

By Max Zahn

…in saying that because I’ve seen both sides. Not that American Buddhism is free of problems, but it’s the purest Buddhism. Of course, if you go to a real Zen master in Japan, that’s even purer. It is absolutely essential to remember the source of the teachings. You’re saying that modern mindfulness has lost contact with the source teachings? Absolutely. No doubt about it. Didn’t you help to bring that about? I hope not. The part that doesn’t conce…

The Legacy of Bush, Gambler of Other People’s Fortunes, Is Still With Us

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…commitment to deregulation and an almost staggering faith in the power of free markets. It is easy to forget the way Bush’s career began. He managed to lose 20 million dollars on the surest of sure things: Texas oil. His father’s friends paid the notes when they came due. So he rolled the dice again, on a long-shot this time, and won big, unseating his well-loved opponent as governor of Texas. And thus was a gambling career born. Dostoevsky was a…

As Catholic Bishops Punish Dissent, Rosemary Radford Ruether’s Life and Legacy Show the Way Forward

By Lauren Barbato

…bortion.” Sponsored by Catholics for Choice (then known as Catholics for a Free Choice), the full-page New York Times advertisement declared “a diversity of opinions regarding abortion exists among committed Catholics.” Many theologians, the statement read, believed abortion “can sometimes be a moral choice.” Feminist theologian Margaret Farley, novelist Mary Gordon, and then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo were among the signers. More than two dozen or…

Barack Obama, Pro-Life Hero

By Eric C. Miller

…g initiatives, conservative activists are finding they may apply religious freedom to any number of disparate issues. Apart from trivializing what ought to be a sacred liberal right, the widespread deployment of religious freedom arguments indicates a weak rhetorical posture. In each of the cases mentioned above, opponents of a particular piece of legislation embraced religious freedom only after other strategies failed to persuade. Such arguments…

Is Proselytizing Ever Okay? Are We All Proselytizing All The Time?

By Chrissy Stroop

…ating my religion,” you should feel free to tell them that their religious freedom ends where your own religious freedom and moral autonomy begin. The fundamental fact remains that you haven’t asked them to change their mind about anything; you’ve only asked them to leave you alone. If we want to have a functional pluralist society at all, we need people, broadly, to respect such boundaries. Stalking and harassment shouldn’t get a pass simply beca…