Religion Dispatches
…religious blessing. Robinson, Alston, and producer Sandra Itkoff hope Love Free or Die will motivate people to talk to friends and relatives, and will be a resource for getting more “conflicted Christians” to not only open their hearts but also to change their behavior—including voting. The son and grandson of ministers, Alston says religion is his family business: “My life is tied up in that culture.” Alston is the director of Auburn Media, a pro…
Read More…onfusion now dogs the debate over employers’ First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and the new insurance mandates under the Affordable Care Act, which include birth control. The argument that seems to be winning in court is that employers who oppose the use of birth control for religious reasons should not have to provide it to their workers. Only in a world in which labor has been alienated from production, however, can such an…
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…th states held that there was no violation of the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. That’s because the law doesn’t “substantially burden” anyone’s religious practice and is one of general applicability that was not targeted at infringing a particular religious practice. To permit religious beliefs to “excuse compliance with otherwise valid laws regulating matters the state is free to regulate,” would, the California Supreme Cour…
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…vangelical or post-Christian altogether. I want them to know that a bit of free thinking and iconoclasm never hurt anyone, and that God can handle our occasional wrestling against him. He’s not nearly as petty as many of his spokespeople portray him! Are you hoping to just inform readers? Entertain them? Piss them off? I know that my book will be a bit scandalous to those who are theologically uptight, but that’s fine. I spent so much of my life s…
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…on faith have been desperate to suppress this insight for decades. God is free, and in that freedom, for the poor. That there is the possibility of change, that the bubble has burst and the financial certainties are on the brink of collapse, that the numbness and despair have been pierced—all of this should be evidence for the faithful that God is “operating under a new plan.” This is not the hope Joe Hill famously derided as “pie in the sky, by…
Read More…vernment, perhaps a unity coalition guaranteed by the military, leading to free and fair elections after the shortest time possible within which campaigning can be organized. This requires all the stakeholders on the ground, who are not representatives of the dictatorship, to come to the table, and to receive guarantees both from one another but also from regional powers who can help nudge the process forward. The military has won itself a seat at…
Read More…d be jailed. A HuffPo news item gives more detail, saying that a person is free to leave Islam without harassment, and should only be jailed if they preach to others that they should leave Islam. (I am relying on second-hand reports as Adhami has numerous lectures and there is no direct link to what the reporters are referring to). For a traditionalist scholar like Adhami, this statement is fairly important. He is moving the question of apostasy f…
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…for blacks). Let’s ignore for a moment that the Emancipation Proclamation freed very few slaves. Let’s ignore Harry Stout’s argument in Upon the Altar of the Nation that the proclamation provided a moral rationale for immoral total war. Let’s look forward thirty-five years from 1865 and be struck with a sobering thought. Within one generation, hope had turned to despair. Since the 1950s, African American scholars have referred to the 1890s and ea…
Read More…bo praised the Obama administration’s “very beneficial” diplomatic efforts promoting LGBT human rights and slammed American evangelicals who continue to promote anti-gay attitudes and policies. The U.S. last summer cut aid to Uganda and imposed a travel ban against officials in the African country who are responsible for anti-LGBT and other human rights abuses. The Center for Constitutional Rights in 2012 filed a federal lawsuit against Scott Live…
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…s a baby boomer. In the ‘60s and early ‘70s, the media depicted boomers as free-love hippies and anti-establishment rebels, but those eye-catching stereotypes failed to capture the generation’s true ambition. Many yearned for authenticity. They craved experience. They longed to know God and, just as important, for God to know them. Some boomers joined cults. Others went to communes. Still others tuned in, turned on and dropped out. But many stayed…
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