Marian Edmonds-Allen and I discuss “covenantal pluralism” which can fix LGBTQ+ and faith divides. We review her history, and religion helping LGBTQ+ rights.
Marian Edmonds-Allen and I discuss “covenantal pluralism” which can fix LGBTQ+ and faith divides. We review her history, and religion helping LGBTQ+ rights.
We may share eternity with our political adversaries. That possibility should change how we treat them now.
Women deserve more than permission to choose. They deserve the wisdom and moral guidance to choose well.
The spiritual impact of tithing reaches beyond budgets, investment returns, and promises of material prosperity.
The New Yorker published a story last week about the authorship and provenance of the 1971 book Go Ask Alice. The book is presented as the diary of a teenage girl, but a new book suggests that it was composed by Beatrice Sparks, a woman who claimed to only have found the diary and edited it. The article is a fine read, asking interesting questions about the ethics of publication, and the difficulties of identifying authorship. But near the end of the article they include this line, “As a few ex-Mormons have pointed out, Sparks was not the first Mormon to publish a text ostensibly based on an original source that the rest of the world did not get to see.” The line takes a not-quite veiled swipe at the founding of the religion that Sparks was a member of. I can’t help but wonder if Sparks was a Catholic, would the author have been as comfortable opining, “Sparks is not the first Catholic to put out a book where the original sources aren’t available.” This kind of winking attack feels more fitting on the ex-Mormon Reddit than in a major publication like the New Yorker.
Two stories out over the past several days seem deserving of attention. In one, Walmart settled a religious freedom complaint that seemed likely to end up before the Supreme Court. While in the other, the Major League Baseball team, the Tampa Bay Rays, had a temporary team uniform celebrating sexuality as an identity that several players had religious objections to wearing. The similarities between the two cases are clear. In both, employees sought religious accommodations at work. And in our opinion, these represent a positive step forward for religious freedom. The Walmart case is more complicated. One employee was offered an assistant manager position, but because he was a Seventh-day Adventist, he chose not to work from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. This meant that Walmart would need to rearrange schedules by asking other managers to cover unpopular shifts, leave the store understaffed, or hire an additional manager. All of these potential accommodations would impose some cost on Walmart. The current law on this issue is that employers do not need to accommodate religious employees if there is more than a trivial cost attached. This is a much lower standard of accommodation than is required in other cases, and so some have suggested that the Supreme Court might intervene to make the standard for religious accommodations the same as other kinds of accommodations. While Walmart’s settling prevents that Supreme Court case, for now, it does suggest perhaps a changing tide that employers may be recognizing the prudence of a fairness for all approach. The Tampa Bay Rays situation is in much murkier legal waters. Private employers can compel speech in most cases, even if it’s not directly related to the job, but does asking for a specific religious exemption constitute more than a trivial cost? The Rays sidestepped this question entirely by putting their diversity policies where their mouth is. While some fans opposed anything other than total conformity from the players, the coach said that conversations in the clubhouse were what the Associated Press described as “constructive and emphasized the value of differing perspectives.” It is certainly always difficult to be part of the small group that opts out of the popular statement, but I think it is a sign of progress that in both the cases of Walmart (eventually through litigation) and the Rays, employers recognized the need to appreciate the religious diversity in their workplace.
