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LGBTQ Victory at Christian Azusa Pacific U. Leaves Significant Questions About Future and Faculty Security

By Chrissy Stroop

…here.” Diaz adds, “The administration has been very strategic and hesitant about on-campus events that involve LGBTQ+ conversations and stories because they don’t want any more backlash. What’s upsetting about this is that they continue to silence LGBTQ+ voices.” Unlike many other member schools of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, Azusa Pacific accepts non-Christian as well as Christian students, and thus does not require stude…

Pastor Rob Bell Catches Hell From Conservatives

By Eric Reitan

…istinguishing these things. It demands recognizing that you might be wrong about God. And while the possibility of being wrong about God does not mean you cannot have your views and defend them, it does mean that you need to listen to the thoughtful arguments of those who disagree with you. Not long ago in these pages, I chastised atheists such as PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins for simply ignoring the thoughtful arguments of theologians—so confide…

Diplomatic Suckerhood: Why Israel Is Fighting Toward its Own Demise

By Ira Chernus

…It’s not surprising that Israel gets so little sympathy when it complains about its image problem—which only makes many Israelis worry more about their public image. But if Israeli Jews want to escape that vicious cycle and improve their image, no amount of money spent on clever PR campaigns will help until they do something about a basic root of the problem: their own cultural self-image. Not all Israeli Jews have the same self-image, of course….

Another Manufactured Outrage: Rep. Ilhan Omar Did Nothing Wrong in Listing Hamas, Israel, and U.S. Together

By Joshua Shanes

…the Vietnam War. Think about torture under the Bush administration. Think about complaints raised about American crimes in Afghanistan, including drone attacks, the specific subject of her question! It was none other than Martin Luther King Jr. who called America, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Of course, he was also called an anti-American domestic enemy for doing so. I saw many people laugh at Hamas’s complaint about be…

Gov. Bobby Jindal and the Laying on of Hands

By Lauri Lebo

…ing Barataria Bay. However, he refuses to take guidance from environmental science experts, who fear the $360 million barrier project would be ineffective and could even possibly make the situation worse. Of course, this is a typical response from Jindal, a creationist who is notoriously anti-science. Here is a link to the Family Forum article. If you scroll down to photo under “Let Us Pray!” you’ll see the laying on of hands on Gov. Jindal durin…

Every Homo Reptilia is Somebody’s Sister: Doctor Who Part VI

By Gabriel Mckee

…er echoes Tony’s moral message, telling Ambrose: “In future, when you talk about this, you tell people there was a chance, but you were so much less than the best of humanity.” His turn of phrase is a bit prettier (as is his later order to “Be extraordinary”), but I think it’s important—and a sign of Doctor Who’s moral optimism—that this message came from a human being first. The alien Doctor may be this show’s de facto messiah, but the ethical me…

An Untold Tale: American Fiction vs. The Religious Right

By Christopher Douglas

…avid Foster Wallace, Alice Walker and John Irving, for example. My book is about serious literary writers, although I make a couple of exceptions when I discuss the science fiction novel Contact by Carl Sagan, and Dan Brown’s popular religious mystery thriller, The Da Vinci Code. Sagan has a reputation as a proto-New Atheist, but his novel suggests he was intensely sympathetic to religious experience and authority. By the end of his novel he has h…

An Abbreviated Guide to 5 Arguments Against Contraceptive Coverage in Obamacare

By Sarah Posner

…in the uterus is not an abortion, the relevant matter for the claim of conscience under RFRA and the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause is plaintiffs’ belief that a distinct human life begins at fertilization. It is no salve to plaintiffs’ conscience to be told that the government defines abortion differently. Furthermore, plaintiffs have a colorable cause for concern that the drugs and devices to which they object may act to terminate embryo…

Times Public Editor Slaps Down Unscientific Claims About Emergency Contraception

By Sarah Posner

…coverage encompassing these drugs substantially burdens their exercise of religion. As glad as I am that Sullivan flatly rejected the unexamined dissemination of unscientific views, this debates aren’t just about science. These claims about ella and Plan B continue to swirl around debates about religious freedom. Does religious freedom protect the rejection of science and evidence-based policy?…

Family Planning is Vatican’s Blind Spot on Environment

By Frances Kissling

…of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on the critical issues of “Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature, Our Responsibility.” For four days, members of the Academies, church officials and leading experts, including four Nobel Laureates wrestled with the program’s opening questions: “Are Humanity’s dealings with Nature sustainable? What is the status of the Human Person in a world where science predom…