My religious tradition does not have a counterpart to the Christian concept of’ ‘witness,’ but as I understand it, witnessing implies an obligation to stand up for righteousness and truth. To bear witness is to speak out against injustice, to call attention to wrongs, be they civic or moral. It is an effort to bring us back to first principles.
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Category Archives: Religious Liberty
Charitable Choice
Charitable Choice was intended to encourage government contracts with “faith-based organizations” to provide social services to welfare recipients, and to remove legal obstacles discouraging participation by religious providers.
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Tolerating Muncie
The Religion and Values department at Gallup recently initiated a "Gallup Religious Tolerance Index," which will now be part of Gallup’s regular polling. Five questions will categorize respondents by three levels of religious tolerance: Isolated, Tolerant, and Integrated. "Isolated" individuals–the least tolerant–have religious attitudes Gallup describes as "my tribe or no tribe," characterized by certainty that theirs is the One Right Way.
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Faith Based Terrorism
We can change our foreign policy, we can feed the people who live in these desperately impoverished places, we can give more or less aid to Israel—but none of that is relevant to this particular jihad, or holy war. Those responsible for this wave of terrorist activity are fighting modernity. And there is no more important element of modernity than the secular state.
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The Political Usefulness of Religion
In the (turbulent) wake of the Ninth Circuit Pledge of Allegiance ruling, all I could think of was the study conducted several years ago by the Constitution Center, which concluded that Americans revered the Constitution, but had no idea what it meant.
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