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Why Trump’s Religious Liberty Order is “a Whole Lot of Nothing”

…of whom is Vice President Mike Pence, infamous for the anti-LGBT Religious Freedom Restoration Act he championed while governor of Indiana), should indeed prompt LGBT equality advocates to remain on guard, Kreis said. Just because this particular “religious liberty” executive order didn’t explicitly target the LGBT community doesn’t mean Trump won’t sign another order that does. “I think it’s better to be on guard, and to be proactive, than to wis…

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Wiccan Prayer in Iowa House Highlights Religious Freedom Problem

…ciple of neutrality because they favor belief over non-belief. Here in the United States, it seems premature to conclude that Elena Kagan is wrong and that government meetings must become religion-free zones. One can imagine an uneasy détente in which representatives are conspicuously absent whenever they disagree with the sectarian prayer being given that day. This situation would be constitutional according to Greece v. Galloway, but it would al…

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Christianity’s Greatest Counterfeit

…tle to do with the worship of a marginalized Jew, named Jesus, who came to free the poor and oppressed. This counterfeit Christian community worships power, desires control, and imagines the world revolving around self-sufficient men (and a few women). I call it “Mad Man Religion.” Mad Man Religion looks just like Christianity. It connects religious practices to free market practices like you would connect pieces from a Lego set. And it offers to…

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Why Must Jesus Contain Gluten?

…harist, it included a restatement of a prohibition of totally wheat-gluten-free hosts. This was often reported as something of a snub of the Celiac sufferers (or gluten intolerant) among the faithful. But reading through the directive and the supporting documentation, I was struck by their attempts to accommodate communicants who can’t tolerate some essential aspect of the rite. The bread for the host can be so low in gluten as to qualify for “glu…

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Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates: The Problem with Popularization

…now hold dear. In his tormented, lonesome, obsessive, Calvinist way, he is free. I find him hard to like, but easy to love. Throughout The Wordy Shipmates, Vowell suggests that we live not in John Winthrop or Roger Williams’ world, but in Ronald Reagan’s redaction of their world. This, she argues effectively, is a tragic turn to a noble Arbella image. Ronald Reagan made us believe our city on the hill would come not through serious communitarianis…

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Fear Not, The IRS Isn’t Colluding With Angry Atheists

…tive legal and religious groups that the agency is attempt to stifle their free speech. Through efforts such as Pulpit Freedom Sunday, pastors openly flout the law. Enforcement of the rule, and the revocation of a participating church’s tax-exempt status, though, could trigger a constitutional challenge to it. The rule against politicking, though, isn’t aimed at suppressing free speech but at ensuring that taxpayers don’t subsidize political activ…

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Republican Lauren Boebert Jokes About AR-15s and Jesus — And Yes, She’s a ‘Real’ Christian

…hrist.” She goes on, “We came to Jesus, because we were bound, we were not free. But Jesus paid the ultimate price to set us free for all of eternity.” No, there’s simply no tenable case to be made that Boebert is not a “real” Christian. She is very much a Christian. She is also a terrible person. And if we can’t get it through our heads that it is very possible to be both of those things at the same time, we will never effectively counter the cor…

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George Weigel’s Revisionist History Casts Vatican II as a Christian Nationalist Handbook

…igious Freedom, which declared the “right of the human person to religious freedom,” including the right to be free from government coercion of religious practice or belief. Weigel quotes approvingly from Wojtyla who said during the council that “the right of religious freedom must always be tethered to the responsibility to seek and adhere to the truth, including the truth about God.” In other words, religious freedom must be oriented to the “tru…

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In Praise of Failure: Is Defining Religion Such a Good Idea?

…They might as well protect us from the “establishment” of widget and the “free exercise” thereof. Both are meaningless, since neither “widget” nor “religion” point to anything specific. Linker, on the other hand, takes the exact opposite tack: he legislates the meaning of “religion” as those particular referents marked by the creation of “norms and practices establishing a comprehensive way of life” and so on, based upon “revelation, mystical int…

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Why Antisemitism is an Insufficient (and Risky) Explanation for Hamas’s October 7 Attack on Israel

…military solution. The only future is peace and safety for all—grounded in freedom, justice, and equality,” the ADL shot back saying their ideas “help give rise to antisemitism” and employ “antisemitic tropes.” “In this moment of confusion and pain, we must be clear about one thing: Every Palestinian life, every Jewish life, and every Israeli life is precious, and the Israeli government has failed all of those lives. Only peace, justice, and equal…

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