TAGS
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
TOLERANCE
The news reminded me of my own visit to Stonehenge some decades ago. Like so many others, I was very curious about what drove a people lacking any sort of technology to haul 20-ton rocks many miles and place them in a precise order. The people who built it in multiple stages between 5,000 and 2,600 years ago left no written history of themselves, so we can only guess.
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
A bill currently pending in the Ohio state legislature has resulted in statements that, if it becomes law, students would be allowed to give “wrong” answers in class should scientific findings conflict with their religious beliefs. One opponent was quoted as saying that if a student gave a biblically based answer of 6,000 years as the age of the earth, a teacher would be forced to accept it. Others have made similar charges.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
Turns out they were attending a meeting of Baptist pastors at the hotel. Once we straightened out our respective denominational preferences, we quickly realized we had something in common. Both of us had observed that religion in general—whether Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Scientology or other—was under attack by secular forces.
MEDIA & ETHICS
I actually saw this question in an online forum the other day: “If I wanted to start my own cult, how would I do it?” Now to begin with, the word “cult” is simply a pejorative word for some group the person using it doesn't like.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that a 40-foot-high cross honoring residents of the Maryland town of Bladensburg killed in World War I will be allowed to remain on the public land for which it has stood for almost one hundred years.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
It was a big event: on its final day, a participant reported, “Close to 900 members of civil society and religious groups attended. By my count, we had 36 panels and 186 speakers over those two days (give or take a few). Over 100 governments coming today!”
