Religion Dispatches
…classic evil ‘them’ of US history. Of course, US history itself is hardly free of this phenomenon. Hard-hat construction workers attacked peace demonstrators during the Vietnam War era, and then a decade later became “Reagan Democrats,” supporting the very policies that have kept their real wages nearly stagnant for so many years now. Today, less than a third of voters identify as Republicans or conservatives, yet nearly half say they will vote f…
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…heir own Globe and Mail essay, however, the land that settlers imagined as free wilderness was neither free nor empty. And, they write, the deadly effects of the myths of settler masculinity persist today, as the trial of Colten Boushie’s killer showed. Even if Mennonites thought they had found a pacifist’s paradise in the prairies, their deeds to the land came at the price of violence to Indigenous peoples who still understood the land as their o…
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…xactly what the Establishment Clause prohibits. The Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies emphasized the Free Exercise Clause and their own “religious freedom,” but they ignore, most certainly not by accident, the principle upon which Judge Stearns’ decision rests: “[t]o insist that the government respect the separation of church and state is not to discriminate against religion; indeed, it promotes a respect for religion by refusing to single ou…
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…sing from the use of this Service by anyone else. I’m not sure how much money the Information Age Prayer service has made or how many people would be stupid enough to pay for something they can hit their knees every day and do for free (heck, I do my best praying in the car – all for free!), but it seems to be a mark of today’s pay to play society. There’s no free lunch, not even with God, apparently. As a final sop, the IAP Web owners promise, th…
Read More…ty of which I am a part, and I take serious exception to the institution’s free ride in the press. The complexity of contemporary Catholicism—especially the fact that millions of Catholics want a participatory, democratic, horizontally integrated church with broadly based non-clerical leadership—is newsworthy. Many such important issues, including the institution’s continued efforts to shape public policy on reproductive health, Catholic teachings…
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…hey argued that American conservatives, having successfully mainstreamed a free-market consensus, should pivot to the terrain of social issues, and adopt a “cultural conservatism” centered on family, education, crime, and morality, in order to shape public discourse. Needing a new enemy to rally the public’s interest, Lind focused upon the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist social theorists who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and established the…
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…ese performers sang Olympic pop promos and protesters waved signs reading “Free Tibet” and “Free Speech Now.” One man shouted, “Protect the First Amendment! This isn’t Communist China!” Police and park rangers tried convincing the protesters to leave the plaza and join the pro-Tibet contingent out in the street, but the protesters would not budge. Along the waterfront, the local chapter of Students for a Free Tibet drew huge crowds with their Chin…
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…em. Across the nation, the ACLU has fought for decades to defend religious freedom. But, while the freedom to hold religious beliefs and opinions is absolute, the freedom to act pursuant to one’s religion is not. The conversation about religious freedom in Indiana has revealed confusion about not only this point, but also the very significant differences between the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and SB 101 and other states’ RFRAs. They…
Read More…s make against LGBT equality is that civil rights for LGBT people infringe on the religious freedom of Christians who believe homosexuality is sin. Therefore they insist the government shouldn’t give them, in Santorum’s words, “special privileges.” Conservatives frame this as a free exercise, or religious freedom issue, and, like Bachmann, skirt the church-state separation issue. Because these conservatives believe that the government should endor…
Read More…ally the inaccurate descriptor. After all, Arizona already has a Religious Freedom Restoration Act; SB 1062’s supporters even described it as a way of closing that statute’s alleged “loopholes.” What’s more, since Arizona, unlike its neighbor New Mexico, doesn’t recognize sexual orientation as a protected class in its anti-discrimination laws, all the photographers and bakers and everyone else in Arizona were already perfectly free to turn LGBT pe…
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