Religion Dispatches
…upstaged lately by a politicized notion of “religious liberty.” Christian Freedom refers to the Apostle Paul’s distinction between things that are permissible and things that are helpful. Saved by grace, Christians are free to explore all things. But some things have harmful effects, and should therefore be avoided. Marijuana, the CT editors believe, is distinctly unhelpful. So to be specific, Crouch says this: We at Christianity Today believe Ch…
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…enewed scholarly focus on the toxic dimensions of an always-problematic American freedom. For example, American Studies professor Elizabeth Anker does a good job on “ugly freedoms” in a recent opinion piece citing January 6 and the militant anti-maskers, in which she helpfully references Tyler Stovall’s important work on the historical link between freedom and whiteness. Unfortunately, Anker fails to take sufficient notice of Stovall’s primary the…
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…ence. ACLJ has developed an international presence and launched The East African Center for Law and Justice in 2010 when several African countries were revising their constitutions. They worked to secure privileged status for “biblical principles,” including the outlawing of abortion (even when the mother’s life was in danger) and homosexuality, fighting for punishments as draconian as death and life imprisonment. Their efforts in that regard are…
Read More…on between church and state. The bishops would love to have the separation between church and state we thought we enjoyed just a few months ago, when we were free to run Catholic institutions in conformity with the demands of the Catholic faith, when the government couldn’t tell us which of our ministries are Catholic and which not, when the law protected rather than crushed conscience. The state is making itself into a church. Oh, to be able to p…
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…a “creative” version of nostalgia, she perpetuated a scenario where sexual freedom and women’s equality was the death knell to America. She wrote of the importance of women in raising “manly men,” where there was no “blurring of the sexes,” and “a man’s word was law in his house, no matter how shrewish his wife,” as she wrote in her 1967 article, “Love Thy Neighbor An Example of Divine Humor.” In her words “Papa had nights out with the Boys, and i…
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…savvy methods through which they have formed “relationships” with Hindu Americans, insisting, “All Hindu American values are consistent with the Republican values.” In his speech, Trump praised Indian Americans for having the highest rate of entrepreneurship and college education in the U.S. and then promised that a Trump administration would support such “impressive” citizens by lowering taxes for businesses and eliminating “job-killing” regulati…
Read More…er is a real word. Microsoft Word told me, and Microsoft Word is a real American, because Bill Gates is American. Those of you using iPhones, by the way, are probably Iranians and should be detained or deported. Because Steve Jobs was part Syrian, and Syria is part Iranian, which means your iPhone auto-correct is lying to you. Come to think of it, how do we know Lindsey Graham is not lying to us? How do we know Lindsey Graham’s not an Iranian? Wha…
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…sensibility. Their enchantment with cyberspace integrated the spirit of American exceptionalism, faith in free markets, and a view of computer networks as nature’s next evolutionary leap. Together they enacted the game-changing Telecommunications Act of 1996, which laid the foundations for the industry giants of subsequent decades. On Tailspins and Technical Leaps of Faith The celebratory entrance of technical and political elites into the so-call…
Read More…o consider the urgent issues now presented to evangelical Christians in American society and in the engagement with our culture.” Topics for discussion include “family, marriage, the sanctity of life and religious liberty.” This is Mohler-speak for his well-documented opposition to gay rights, gender equity, women’s autonomy in reproductive health choices, and the right to be free from religious discrimination in the public sphere. The fact that M…
Read More…a dormitory and besides going to class and a small part time job, I was a free bird. In Ramadan a free bird, flies high on the rituals of the month. I stood for 20 units or tarawih every night that I was fasting. Like the first time reading through the Qu’ran in Arabic on my own this was exhilarating. Somewhere around 12 or 14 units, I lost track of everything outside of the recitation and the ritual performance—the zone. It was even more intense…
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