BLOG
Religious Freedom
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
We need to grow up. We need to stop acting like mean girls making fun of our classmates or children fighting over a basketball.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
If you live in America you might find this hard to believe. Most people here and in Western countries are accustomed to Christians being “the norm,” with religious bigotry and scorn reserved for newer or less “mainstream” faiths. But that analysis would be missing one critical element: almost all religions are a minority somewhere.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
The Pew Research Center just updated its 10-point scale Government Restrictions Index. And it’s depressing: the score has risen steadily since 2011.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
It means something that freedom of religion is grouped with the freedoms of thought and conscience because, over the ages, human beings who thought about being and ethics naturally also thought about religion.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
It was April 2019, the beginning of Easter celebrations in France. That’s when, to the world’s horror, the 850-year-old Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral erupted in flames. Was it just an accident, terrible timing, or did someone intend to set this fire?
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Three generations earlier the grandparents of the Germans who affirmed our right to believe had engaged in an attack on a religious minority in their country, one that would culminate in the extermination of millions of German Jews and millions more throughout Europe.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Religious intolerance is an old story in humanity, nearly as old as religion itself. But tolerance is old too: Cyrus the Great, one of the founders of the Persian Empire back in 500 BC, built his empire on religious tolerance.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
The case has drawn considerable attention not only because of the fate of plaintiff Gerald Bostock, a Clayton County employee fired by his superiors after they learned he’d joined a gay softball league, but because of fears that, in the words of the main dissenting opinion, the Court’s decision “will threaten freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and personal privacy and safety.”
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Watching a condemned person die by hanging was once a public spectacle. Today, that is not the case—there is no entrance fee, and witnesses are not allowed to throw vegetables or cheer. But most often the witnesses are hostile to the person. After all, this is the ultimate punishment, and the condemned will finally pay for their crimes with their lives. The families of victims will finally have their revenge, or simple closure of that which began with harm done to their loved one.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
The U.S. Supreme Court will shortly decide whether the State of Montana can prevent the use of public funds for any educational institution controlled by a religious organization.
