Rap Sheet
Links on R&P from around the web
The Geography of Abortion
posted on June 13, 2012At The Atlantic, Richard Florida breaks down abortion data to the state level, analyzing the distribution of abortions obtained across the country. His study finds that, “the geography of abortion follows the red and blue political patterning of the states.” The data also show that a “state’s abortion rate is negatively associated with the share of residents who say religion is a very important part of their daily lives,” writes Florida.
Federal Lawsuit Charges Religious Freedom Commission with Discriminating against Muslims
posted on June 13, 2012Safiya Ghori-Ahmad is suing the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom for allegedly discriminating against her because she is a Muslim, Michelle Boorstein reports for The Washington Post. The lawsuit quotes Nina Shea, one of commission’s leaders, as having written that “hiring a Muslim like Ms. Ghori-Ahmad to analyze religious freedom in Pakistan would be like ‘hiring an IRA activist to research the UK twenty years ago.’” In an email message to The Post, Shea refutes the claim that any religiously motivated discrimination occurred, stating instead that she “opposed hiring Ghori-Ahmad because of the lawyer’s views, including her analysis of the causes of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.”
Gentle Dissent in Mormon Church on Gay Marriage
posted on June 13, 2012The New York Times’ Jack Healy reports on how “gay and straight Mormons are making increasingly vocal calls for church leaders to reconsider their stance on gay marriage and welcome openly gay congregants back into the church.” According to Erika Munson, the founder of “Mormons Building Bridges,” which organized the 300 Mormons who marched in Salt Lake City’s recent gay pride parade, “[w]hat our group is working for is to make a space for gay people in the church.” However, Healy notes, “[e]ven as [Munson] spoke about the need for a new direction, she was careful not to criticize the church leaders who decide those views.”
Justices Deny Review over Students’ Religious Messages in Classroom
posted on June 13, 2012On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case involving elementary school students who passed out religious-themed gifts during school. CNN’s Bill Mears reports that a federal appeals court in Texas had previously sided with the public school officials who prevented a student from handing out bags containing pens “in the shape of a candy cane with a Christian message that read in part: ‘Every time you see a candy cane, remember the message of the candy maker: Jesus is the Christ!’” Mears writes, “[a]t issue was whether school officials can be sued for violating the First Amendment rights of what the students claimed was their ‘private, non-curricular speech based solely upon its religious viewpoint.’”
Q&A: Norman Finkelstein
posted on June 13, 2012David Samuels at Tablet interviews the controversial, Jewish political theorist, Norman Finkelstein, about his two news books, Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End, and What Gandhi Says about Nonviolence, Resistance, and Courage. On the subject of the Israel-Palestine conflict, Finkelstein states, “we should enforce the law and end the conflict on the basis of international law; that means a two-state settlement and a June ’67 border and a just resolution of the refugee question.” Finkelstein also defends Lebanon and Hezbollah: “the Lebanese have the right to defend their sovereignty, and they have the right to use armed force to evict foreign occupiers.”
If You’re Selling Scorn for Conservative Christians, the Market is Hot
posted on June 13, 2012Timothy Dalrymple at Patheos examines “the ways in which progressive Christians talk about conservative Christians.” He argues that progressive Christians are doing a disservice to themselves when they scorn conservative Christians. Heated rhetoric, he writes, only emphasizes stereotypes that hurt the entire Christian “church and its witnesses.” Dalrymple writes, “I’ve seen a lot of young, progressive evangelicals denouncing and caricaturing their conservative brethren for their “culture war” concerns … If we truly care for the public witness of the church, then we (liberal and conservative) need to stop slandering and caricaturing the other half of the church.”
The Unexpected Evangelical Silence on Mitt Romney’s Mormonism
posted on June 13, 2012In 2007, Southern Baptists responded to Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” speech by calling Mormonism a “theological cult” and a “false religion.” In 2012, Religion News Service’s Jonathan Merritt observes that a growing number of evangelicals are reticent when it comes to judging Romney’s religion. Merritt writes, “[m]ore recently, evangelicals have been more than willing to work with Mormons in the fight against gay marriage,” a political coalition that has led some evangelicals, according to president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Leith Anderson, to see Romney “more as the Republican candidate for president and less as a Mormon.”
Myanmar Rakhine State Violence: Buddhist-Muslim Clashes Leave 7 Dead
posted on June 12, 2012Religious and ethnic clashes in Myanmar that started last Friday resulted in seven dead and hundreds of homes burned, the Associated Press reports. “[I]n some of the country’s deadliest sectarian bloodshed in years,” Buddhists and Muslims rioted over “the rape and murder last month of a Buddhist girl, allegedly by three Muslims, and the June 3 lynching of 10 Muslims in apparent retaliation.” The unrest “poses one of the biggest tests yet for Myanmar’s new government as it tries to reform the nation after generations of military rule.”
Reel Faith: How the Drive-In Movie Theater Helped Create the Megachurch
posted on June 12, 2012The Atlantic’s Megan Garber traces the origin of Crystal Cathedral, the California megachurch now facing bankruptcy, back to the 1950s and drive-in movie theaters. In 1955, the church’s founders, the Rev. Robert Schuller and his wife Arvella, of the Reformed Church in America, started their congregation at a drive-in theater. Garber writes, “The Schullers, and their contemporary entrepreneurs of religiosity, had happened into an idea that made particular cultural sense at its particular cultural moment: In the mid-1950s, Americans found themselves in the honeymoon stages of their romances with both the automobile and the television.”
Jewish Community Rallies Around Alleged Abuser
posted on June 12, 2012The Associated Press’ Colleen Long reports that Brooklyn’s Jewish orthodox community continues to defend Nechemya Weberman, a man who is accused of molesting a girl. The “girl, now 17, was sent to Weberman at age 12 because she’d been asking theological questions and he had a reputation for helping people back on the spiritual path.” Since being accused, Weberman has pleaded not guilty; many Hasidic newspapers also assert his innocence. “Members are encouraged to first speak to a rabbi before going to secular authorities,” Long writes,” and as a result, cases rarely make it to outside law enforcement.”