I wanted to draw your attention to the work of Brian Grimm who runs the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation. Next week his organization will be hosting a conference in Washington D.C. where prominent leaders from Fortune 500 companies will be speaking about the valuable role of religious pluralism in their workplaces. You can learn about one of the speakers here: Dr. Judith Richter from Religious Freedom & Business Fund on Vimeo.
A spate of vandalism is targetting Catholic churches in the wake of the leaked opinion reversing Roe v. Wade. https://kdvr.com/news/local/boulder-church-vandalized-for-2nd-time/ This occurs at a time when hate crimes on the basis of religion are on the rise across the country. And most of this violence seems to be based on a mistaken idea about what the actual impact of a Supreme Court Ruling in the Dobbs case would actually mean.
One of the big religious freedom wins of the last generation has been for religious individuals to have access to the same resources in the public square. Including a case resolved today. Of course, this makes many people unhappy. Rather than engaging the issues on their merits, they often resort to parody and ridicule. Pastafarians, those who claim to worship the flying spaghetti monster, have made a few claims, but their purpose seems to mostly be rhetorical ridicule. The Satanic Temple, on the other hand, is a group created specifically to try to undermine religious freedom claims by making their own offensive claims. These groups are not Satanists in any meaningful sense of the word. The Satanic Temple has recently sued to have an afterschool club at a Pennsylvania elementary school. In my opinion, there are two positions to reasonably take in response. 1) Rely on the Supreme Court’s position that religious accommodations can only be made for sincere religious beliefs. 2) Support them in their religious freedom. I am inclined to take the second. If the club’s purpose is to support rational inquiry, there is no reason they can’t use less offensive symbols. But while that’s obviously not their purpose, subjecting religious beliefs to a judge to decide if it’s sincere or not feels much more problematic over the long term. The reality is that those with sincere religious beliefs will outlast those who are trolling. So open the doors for all faiths, including the trolls, and eventually, they will fall away. But that’s just my first instinct. What do you think?
President Biden has promised to nominate a black woman to the Supreme court. We look at three likely nominees’ stand on religious liberty.
If you look close enough, the influence of that baby born in Bethlehem is all around us. I rejoice in how the life of Jesus continues to change our world today.
In an age where Christians (and everyone else) tend to flow with the cultural current, the remarks of President Dallin H. Oaks on Friday at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville were striking in their departure from popular rhetorical trends.
Did you know countries in the world best for religious freedom are also best for gay rights? A lesbian minister shares why she believes “covenantal pluralism” might hold a big clue for healing the LGBT+ / faith divide.
As more young people today lose an appreciation for religious freedom, it’s understandable that we point to higher principles. It might also help to direct attention back to our own family’s stories to understand why this is still so important today.
The Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Fulton v. Philadelphia will have significant implications for religious freedom.
It’s unethical to enact laws that take for granted that the evident purposes of one’s sex-specific embodiment are incidental to human happiness.
