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The Roberts Court’s “Special Solicitude” for Corporations

…Smith jurisprudence,” she wrote. RFRA didn’t expand the scope of religious freedom rights, and in the case law there is “no support for the notion that free exercise rights pertain to for-profit corporations.” There’s a reason for that, Ginsburg maintained. While the Constitution and the courts have long recognized a “special solicitude” for religious organizations, there is no such solicitude for commercial entities. The reason for that is “hardl…

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As Catholic Bishops Punish Dissent, Rosemary Radford Ruether’s Life and Legacy Show the Way Forward

…bortion.” Sponsored by Catholics for Choice (then known as Catholics for a Free Choice), the full-page New York Times advertisement declared “a diversity of opinions regarding abortion exists among committed Catholics.” Many theologians, the statement read, believed abortion “can sometimes be a moral choice.” Feminist theologian Margaret Farley, novelist Mary Gordon, and then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo were among the signers. More than two dozen or…

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Romney’s Debate Coach and his Religion Answer

…inciple. As I wrote at the time, Romney had a conundrum: needing to defend free exercise of religion (an in particular, his religion), but realizing that the Republican base demands the “Judeo-Christian” answer. Given that many conservative evangelicals don’t even think Romney’s religion is part of Christianity, when he gave the “Judeo-Christian” answer last night I cringed—because he didn’t balance it with a free exercise answer. In other words,…

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Searching in Vain for a “Pure” Elie Wiesel

…th leftist intellectuals who reject it. Perhaps another generation will be free enough to criticize Israel; I cannot. [Italics added.] Was this a betrayal of his other broadly humanist commitments? Absolutely. There is no reason why critics should not continue to take Wiesel to task for what he said about Palestinians, or why they should not point out how especially unprepared Wiesel was for the recent growth of Israeli racism. But if we have anyt…

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No “Cancel Culture” on the Right: How Conservative Christians Protect the Powerful

…legitimately weaponized and used to harm less powerful people? Sure. I’m a freelance writer and a trans woman with no trust fund to my name, and this is something I unfortunately know from personal experience. But it’s a leap to conclude from the inappropriate weaponization of “cancel culture” that all opinions deserve access to all platforms. Nor is this a reason to stick our heads in the sand, ostrich-like, and ignore the very real ways in which…

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Evangelical PR Blitz Before Midterms Won’t Fix the ‘81% Problem’

…age of conservative evangelicals rather than what all too often amounts to free PR, journalists will need to ask such questions, to focus on the ways that evangelicals make themselves “all things to all people,” addressing the general public very differently from the ways they address their own; and journalists will need to include the perspectives of critical researchers and exvangelicals alongside the voices of evangelicals in the articles they…

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Student Expelled from Sorority for Transphobia Illustrates the Problem with Evangelical Understanding of Pluralism

…oul of their ideology. When the logical endpoint of your understanding of “freedom of religion” is state-sanctioned violence against othered people, I contend that you’re doing freedom of religion wrong. This will bring us back to the prominent theologian I mentioned at the beginning of this article. (You didn’t think I was going to forget about him, did you?) Presbyterian Church of America minster, author, and apologist Tim Keller—he of “sex outs…

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First Gay Bishop? Give Me a Break

Love Free or Die—a documentary about Gene Robinson, whose ordination as an openly gay, partnered bishop, triggered responses still reverberating within the Episcopal Church and the global Anglican Communion—won the Special Jury Award for documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in January. I got to see the film at an event hosted by the Center for American Progress, at which both the bishop and the film’s director, Macky Alston, were present. Th…

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 A Pence Presidency Would Give Margaret Atwood’s Dystopian Vision a Run for its Money

…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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Faith for Fuck-Ups? A New Book Explores a Broader Vision for Christianity

…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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