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Rebuilding the Wall of Separation: A Progressive Discussion on Church & State

By Bruce Ledewitz

…led to the disestablishment of other state churches; as the states had no business favoring one religious group over another. If we focus on the establishment clause or even the notion of separation of church and state without considering the context of the balancing free exercise clause—or the Constitution itself and the relevant ideas and history that led to it—we are missing the forest for the trees. Historians Isaac Kramnick (Cornell) and Fra…

This Just In: College Will Make You an Atheist

By Susan Henking

…through a study of 26,200 people and, as one odd assumption, the choice of business as a “culturally neutral” major. Despite this, some fearmongering headlines announced, for example, that the humanities lead to loss of religion. In articulating the reasons for the decline of religiosity among various majors, the authors identify several culprits: science, “developmentalism” (by which they mean a belief in progress), and postmodernism (by which th…

Far-Right Evangelicals And The Campaign Against Obama

By Frank Schaeffer

…ious organizations should to be taxed in exactly the same way as any other business or individual; second, full disclosure of candidates’ (and elected members of government, as well as government employees) connections with religious organizations of any kind need to be made; along with financial disclosures subject to exactly the same kind of tough investigation that candidates’ tax returns and other financial dealings are subject to. And last, l…

Ten Commandments of the Antichrist: The Georgia Guidestones

By Joseph Laycock

…ed of perpetuating a hoax, either out of amusement or to promote Fendley’s business. Both men took lie detector tests, which they passed. Sullivan suggests that the hoax rumor may have come from rival granite workers. According to Jim Miles (author of Weird Georgia), shortly after the Guidestones were unveiled, a local minister stated his suspicion that “Mr. Christian is not a Christian” and that the monument was designed for the worship of the su…

On Religion, Abortion, and Politics: Dr. George Tiller’s Christian Ethics

By Ed Knudson

…rch and secular world, the world was as much the realm of God’s grace and preservation as the church—the whole world is the place of God’s creation. So Lutherans hear in sermons again and again that they are sent into the world to love the neighbor, to carry out their vocation in the world. The secular is not the place where God is absent, it is the place where Lutherans are called to serve, just as Dr. Tiller was doing in his medical practice. It…

Conservatives Stoke Fear of Fifth Column

By Sarah Posner

…about the Clarion Fund and its films last year, Paul Barrett, an editor at Business Week and author of American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion, told me, “Saying that organizations like CAIR and ISNA aim to institute Islamic religious law in the United States is similar to saying that Jewish or Catholic religious organizations aim to institute rabbinic or church law in the U.S. The notion that they are threat to the republic, a fift…

Dilemmas of American Empire: Can Obama Pull Off a Game-Changer in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan?

By Gary Dorrien

…Sunni insurgents. But violence has spiked again recently; it’s a perilous business to depend on buying off the opposition; and most importantly, the fundamental problems that fueled the insurgency and civil war still exist in Iraq. Meanwhile the U.S.’s price tag is approaching $2 trillion, as predicted by Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes back in 2006. All of this will take decades to play out, well…

By the Way: “Ten Commandments Judge” To Be Alabama’s Next Gov?

By Randall Balmer

…where else precisely because the government has stayed out of the religion business. When Judge Myron Thompson ruled (correctly) that Moore’s stunt represented a violation of the First Amendment and the workers were preparing to remove the monument, one of the protesters screamed, “Get your hands off my God!” Unless I miss my guess, one of the commandments etched into that monument says something about a graven image. Moore’s refusal to remove the…

Muslim Women “Warriors”

By Frances Kissling

…the institutional church has only the power we give it. They go about the business of ministry and service with skill and good grace. Increasingly, Buddhist women have been seeking full ordination within the various branches of Buddhism. In Korea, Taiwan, and China, Buddhist nuns have been fully ordained for centuries, in an unbroken lineage back to the Buddha. In other countries and branches of Buddhism, the practice of fully ordaining women has…

The Incredible Shrinking Catholic Church

By Paul Gorrell

…edict, many Catholics are already being encouraged to take their spiritual business elsewhere. We have seen an increase in the number of American politicians who are asked to remove themselves from communion lines and, recently, priests have even denied parishioners communion if they vote for a political candidate who favors abortion rights. This exclusion from the sacrament is essentially a form of excommunication. Dogma Over Diplomacy Ironically…