Religion Dispatches
…rades to the site—an enhanced reading experience, better integration with social media, peace on earth. (We’ll be updating via our newsletter, here.) It’s our birthday, but it’s you who deserve the party (and the gluten-free, kosher, vegan, cruelty-free cake). Thank you for reading, for writing, and for your thoughtful and dynamic engagement with the ever-evolving question of religion in public life and culture. Yours, The Eds. …
Read More…d mid-November. You can watch the first session of the seminar on-line for free here. But I already have done that for you. Gothard promotes an integrated world and life view drawn from the Bible, which he claims speaks to all areas of life. Especially prominent are his views on financial matters and marriage and family matters. For example, Gothard teaches that debt is unbiblical and “a hidden judgment of God; debt is always a judgment.” He cla…
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…a massive expropriation of wealth from each of these communities, as being free and white was tied to land-owning, or capital. To remove any category was to remove citizenship and to steal wealth. Racism has always been profitable, from slavery to Jim Crow—this theft of citizenship and capital simply followed a well-established pattern. The difference between the 1920s and the 2010s is that in the past, racism was out in the open. This administrat…
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…serter, and denier. Therefore they faced a reminder that they too were not free of the sin that leads to the cross, and were in need of conversion. We Are All Betrayer, Deserter, Denier If Heim is right about this, then Jones and Phelps and their respective congregations are symbolically enacting the very thing that the passion stories central to Christianity were intended to repudiate. Where they are called to see the crucified Christ in those wh…
Read More…ek at the Values Voters Summit. Here, I heard a lot of talk about economic freedom, the supposedly free-spending, monstrous, socialist government, and about the wonders of free enterprise. Most people hear that, and they think, what happened to the God talk? These people must be trying to appeal to the largely secular tea parties. But it’s there. While many tea partiers might come to a rally with an entirely secular objection to what they call “bi…
Read More…apply to their sons, only to their daughters. That their sons should have free rein to let “boys be boys” or to “sow their wild oats” went hand-in-hand with the idea that chaste girls wouldn’t have to worry about such boys because their own sexual experimentation would be heavily policed. So the so-called “son panic” is really anger that their sons are no longer free to do whatever they want and get away with it—as long as they “do it” to the rig…
Read More…r not having a beard is a central element of Islam. And I realize that the free exercise in question need not be “central” to any religion for it to qualify for RFRA or RLUIPA protection, under current jurisprudence. What I’m trying to highlight is the erasure of a distinction between a plaintiff’s sincere belief (which is a question of fact, whether or not a court chooses to investigate it) and the question of whether a burden is substantial, whi…
Read More…discuss important controversial topics and that schools must be “religion free zones.” Superintendent Ledbetter announced that he’s considering more diversity and sensitivity training for teachers. He also sent a certified letter to the parents explaining that the incident will not happen again and that Nancy Perry is retiring. A local NBC affiliate reported, “The superintendent believes it goes back to a basic lesson: don’t talk politics or reli…
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…Focus, “Enforcing Federal Law Mandating Compliance by Public Schools with Free Speech Guidelines,” also comes with a model bill, The “Preserving Religious Freedom in School Act,” which essentially seeks to fully enforce a guidance regarding school prayer issued in 2003 by the federal Department of Education. The manual explains that “Federal law requires certification of compliance with Department of Education guidance assuring the religious free…
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…time warp and a time when vigilante violence was the means of suppressing free speech. To better understand these fears, it’s important to understand how Bangladesh has come to this point—and why many U.S. lawmakers continue to overlook its growing political and social turmoil. While Bangladesh eventually became its own country following a brief war between India and Pakistan, the remnants of those loyal to West Pakistan and opposed to a secular…
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