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What Coverage of a Fatal Orthodox Baptism Reveals About Western Media

…practice of full-immersion infant baptism, including a petition urging the Romanian church to change its practice. The Romanian Patriarch has said no such changes will occur. But neither the incident (no matter how tragic) nor the reaction (no matter how expected) is what I’m interested in here. What interests me is how differently the incident has been reported in the Western media than in traditionally Orthodox countries, and the ways in which t…

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At the UN, Conservative Christian Agenda Cloaked in Human Rights Language

…s noteworthy for affirming a positive “Right to a Religion”—in contrast to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, the standard in accepted international instruments. Here again, the Declaration cites the UDHR but omits its crucial inclusion of the “freedom to change” belief and highlights “the right of parents to guide the moral and religious education of their children.” Thus, it exemplifies one conservative response to the challenge of ch…

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No, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow is Not Calling for Peace — In Fact, He’s Putin’s Accomplice

…an unprovoked attack and a violation of human rights. Patriarch Daniel of Romania called the violence, “ a war launched by Russia against a sovereign and independent state.” Even Metropolitan Onufry, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that’s still tied to the Moscow Patriarchate—literally, Kirill’s Man in Kyiv—compared the Russian invasion to Cain killing his brother Abel and addressed Putin directly. This difference has not gone unnoticed…

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The Quietly Crumbling Wall of Separation

…th’s damage may actually leave some plaintiffs better able to defend their free-exercise rights than before. And other rulings on both free-exercise and non-establishment cases—such as in employment cases involving churches and cases involving government-sanctioned prayer—have maintained a distinctiveness for religion as a constitutional category. But other learned First Amendment scholars—such as Marci Hamilton of Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law…

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Bill Gates’ Comments on Covid-19 Vaccine Enflame ‘Mark of the Beast’ Worries in Some Christian Circles

…New Money System 666 (1982), popularized the idea that the Uniform Product Codes (i.e. UPCs or barcodes) were the mark of the beast and would one day be tattooed on human bodies. A trend of ironic barcode tattoos popular in the early twentieth century nods to this idea while commenting on western consumerism. Microchip technology has since replaced the UPC as the most likely candidate for the introduction of a cashless society and thus the mark of…

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The Free Speech Case That Dared Not Speak the Name of the Establishment Clause

…cluttered and weird. This is why Pleasant Grove City was easy to decide on free speech grounds. But, as Justice Scalia wrote in a concurrence, this free speech case was “litigated in the shadow” of the Establishment Clause. In general, government is permitted to say anything it likes. But one limit on the doctrine of government speech is that the government may not prefer one religion over another. Pleasant Grove City is not permitted to put up a…

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Q Shaman’s New Age-Radical Right Blend Hints at the Blurring of Seemingly Disparate Categories

…und base underneath the town where alien experiments were undertaken, that free energy was possible if only the dark cabal hadn’t kept it from us to continue profiting from our labor, and that the banking system and wage labor were designed to keep us enslaved. Spirituality, they told me, was the route to freedom from these third dimensional machinations. The dark cabal wants to block spiritual evolution because it threatens their control. What’s…

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After Westboro: The Trouble With “Tolerance”

…the world by our vocal chords, speech produces real consequences. That is, free speech is not free from consequences that affect our bodily, material reality. Our speech, our words, our language constructs our world, defines reality and gives meaning to our sense of self. Michel Foucault called this type of power “discourse.” The term “discourse” describes the stories we as a society tell about ourselves and the world, from what perspective we tel…

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Note to David Brat: Free Markets Are Not Calvinist

…e law—neither the Torah nor the laws of the Roman Church. The Christian is free from condemnation, free to obey God joyfully, and free to make individual choices about earthly matters—even including usury (lending money at interest). So thus far it may seem that Calvin put his stamp of approval on the market free-for-all that’s so popular with bankers, business owners, financiers, and Brat voters. In her post on RD Julie Ingersoll helpfully sums u…

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Blackwater’s Free-Market Crusade

…cidedly not militant organizations. But in the imagination of Erik Prince, freedom of militancy and freedom of religion go, literally, hand in hand. He once described his liberated militia thusly: “Everybody carries guns, just like Jeremiah rebuilding the temple in Israel—a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other.” It’s a fabulous prospect, to a certain habit of thinking, where freedom is the substance of things hoped for and its evidence can…

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