Brian Leiter's Why Tolerate Religion? is a crucial book in the area of law and religion—published in 2013, it defends the view that there is no compelling moral or legal reason to provide special protection to religion as such.
In September of this year, Baylor University sponsored two lectures on the topic of religious persecution. The presenters were former congressman Frank Wolf (now the Jerry and Susie Wilson Chair of Religious Freedom at Baylor) and Princeton Professor Robert P. George, who currently serves as the . . . . Continue Reading »
Many Americans have embraced one of two myths concerning the role of religion in the American founding. The first, widespread in nineteenth-century America and kept alive by popular Christian authors today, is that virtually all the founders were pious, orthodox believers who sought to establish a Christian nation.
Secularist threats against religious liberty are spreading like a stain. Thus, I was attracted immediately to Bruce Abramson's Mosaic column, How Jews Can Help Christians Live as a Creative Minority.Abramson warns Christians that the space to practice their faith in the way they live is . . . . Continue Reading »
Kim Davis may not have a legal leg to stand on (see here, and here). But I think some Christians are moving too quickly to critique her situation on a purely legal basis. We are Christians first, before we are Americans. So before we start talking about whether this is a good religious liberty . . . . Continue Reading »
A great deal is at stake. The sexual revolution is just that, a revolution, and revolutions often pose a dire threat to liberty. The logic of the Supreme Court's discovery of a right to same-sex marriage poses a threat to anyone who dissents. It's not unreasonable to suppose that the next stage of the gay rights Jihad will involve political action to defund organizations that refuse to affirm gay marriage, or even to work to revoke their tax exempt status. Continue Reading »
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage, the question is: who deserves to be coerced by the government to embrace the Court’s new definition of marriage, or penalized for declining to do so? The answer: No one. The government is not justified in coercing or penalizing anyone or any institution that believes and acts on the belief that marriage is a union of husband and wife. Continue Reading »
One year ago I wrote in these pages about how the InterVarsity ministry at Bowdoin College, with a forty year history of ministering the Christian Gospel, was formally refused access to meet with students on campus facilities. Christian students in the Bowdoin Christian Fellowship were denied . . . . Continue Reading »
On September 2, 1939, the House of Commons debated the British government’s response to the German invasion of Poland the previous day. The ruling Conservative Party was badly divided between those demanding that Britain fulfill its obligations to Poland and those addicted to the habits of appeasement. “Party loyalty” was being invoked to drown out Conservative opposition to Conservative prime minister Neville Chamberlain when the deputy leader of the opposition Labour Party, Arthur Greenwood, rose to speak. Then, from the Tory back benches, came the voice of an anti-appeasement Conservative, Leo Amery, who cried, “Speak for England, Arthur!” Continue Reading »
Like many social conservatives, especially Christian ones, I spend a lot of my time reading and writing about religious freedom, especially how it might be affected by the legalization of same-sex marriage and the campaign for “gay rights” more generally.Yet at the same time, I harbor doubts about the position we are staking out.You see, I sometimes think that Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith may have been correct. Continue Reading »
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