Rap Sheet
Links on R&P from around the web
Idaho Woman’s Case Marks a Key Abortion Challenge
posted on June 19, 2012At The Los Angeles Times, Kim Murphy reports on Jennie Linn McCormack’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of an Idaho law that “makes it illegal to obtain abortion pills from out-of-state doctors over the Internet.” McCormack, who lives in a “conservative, heavily Mormon region of southeast Idaho,” used such pills to abort a fetus that was 5 months into its gestation. Murphy writes that McCormack reached this decision in December 2010, when the “33-year-old single mother of three, found herself pregnant again. Unemployed and living off $250 a month in child support, she saw the idea of adding to her brood as unthinkable.”
Can Conservatives Overcome Washington’s Secular Bent to Ban Gay Marriage?
posted on June 19, 2012The outcome of a Washington state referendum this November to ban gay marriage, which is sponsored by a coalition of conservative religious groups, depends on how the state’s religious “nones” vote, reports Religion News Service’s Tracy Simmons. According to the 2010 census, Washington has almost 4.4 million residents who don’t belong to a religious organization. “Any political issue, whether it passes or fails, depends by and large on how the vast majority of these unchurched are persuaded,” notes Patricia O’Connell Killen, the editor of the book, Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone.
How I Constructed ‘The American Bible’
posted on June 19, 2012Stephen Prothero, Boston University professor and regular contributor to CNN’s Belief Blog, provides insight into how he composed his new book, The American Bible: How Our Words Unite, Divide, and Define a Nation. The book is a compilation of influential American speeches, songs, letters, and novels. In selecting among America’s canonical writings, Prothero writes that he looked for “texts that have generated conversation and controversy,” and that also “speak to the meaning of ‘America’ and ‘Americans.’”
War on Religion? What War on Religion?
posted on June 19, 2012When GQ’s Marin Cogan attended the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference this past weekend, she hoped to hear heated rhetoric about Obama’s “war on religion,” a phrase that appears frequently on the Faith & Freedom’s website. Yet Cogan was disappointed, remarking that “the only person I heard use the term ‘war on religion’ was, well…me.” However, Cogan notes that while the phrase itself was absent from the conference, the sentiment was not. Ralph Reed, the founder and chairman of the organization, stated that, “[the Obama] administration has demonstrated an insensitivity, if not outright hostility to religious belief and the expression of religious belief in society.”
Jews against Israel
posted on June 19, 2012At The American Conservative, Paul Gottfried reviews Jack Ross’ new biography of Elmer Berger, Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism. While Berger became “[a]n increasingly marginalized figure after the birth of the Jewish state in 1948,” Gottfried writes that Ross’ biography of Berger reminds its readers “that there was a time when a large, influential body of Jewish leaders vehemently opposed the creation of a Jewish national state.”
Read at The American Conservative
Praise for Obama on Immigration from the Religious Right
posted on June 18, 2012The Atlantic’s Molly Ball reports on the response from some prominent conservative Christians to President Obama’s announcement that he has moved to halt the deportation of young illegal immigrants. Many on the Christian right, like the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land, continue to criticize Obama for what they have called the president’s “war on religion.” Yet, Ball writes, “Land and others … part ways with some of their Republican brethren when it comes to immigration, and they have been increasingly vocal about their views on the issue, which they see as one of universal human dignity.”
CHA Urges Expanded Religious Exemption, Says Government Must Pay
posted on June 18, 2012The Catholic News Service’s Nancy Frazier O’Brien reports that a major supporter of the president’s health reform law has joined other Catholic organizations in criticizing the Obama administration for its handling of the contraception mandate controversy. Last week, leaders of the Catholic Health Association (CHA) urged the Obama administration to expand the types of religious employers exempted from the mandate to provide contraception coverage. According to the CHA, the current “accommodation” that the administration has proposed does not go far enough “to meet the religious liberty concerns of all of our members and other church ministries.”
Thousands March Silently to Protest Stop-and-Frisk Policies
posted on June 18, 2012The New York Times’ John Leland and Colin Moynihan report that this past Sunday thousands of demonstrators marched down New York City’s Fifth Avenue to protest the New York Police Department’s “stop-and-frisk” policies. Hundreds of organizations endorsed the march, including leading religious, civil rights, and gay, lesbian, and transgender groups. “The turnout reflected the growing alliance between civil rights groups and gay and lesbian activists,” writes Leland and Moynihan, “who in past years have often kept each other at arm’s length.”
Time to Rethink the New York Jew
posted on June 18, 2012At The Jewish Daily Forward, J.J. Goldberg reports on the UJA-Federation’s newly released study of New York City’s Jewish population. According to Goldberg, the study’s most significant finding is what he calls the “exploding population” of the numbers of ultra-Orthodox, especially compared to the growth rates of other Jewish communities in New York. “The astonishing trends,” writes Goldberg, “bear a striking resemblance to the much-reported demographic patterns currently keeping Israeli leaders awake at night.”
Read at The Jewish Daily Forward
That 1985-2002 Clergy-Abuse Gap (Revisited)
posted on June 18, 2012Get Religion’s editor, Terry Mattingly, writes that, contrary to what some recent news stories have reported, 2012 does not mark the 10th anniversary of the Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse crisis. “Religion-beat veterans … have been covering the crisis since the mid-1980s,” writes Mattingly, “complete with magazine cover stories, a major book or two and even a made for television movie.”