Religion
The comments sections of Part I: The Difference Between Religious Freedom and Religious Tolerance Part II: Are We Hostile Toward or Encouraging Religious Belief? Part III: Consequences of Excluding Religion from the Public Square of this Theocrats, Moral Relativism & the Myth of Religious Tolerance series, plus Justin’s Favoring the Non-Participatory posting, offer up many…
Although the furor over Pope Benedict’s University of Regensburg lecture has centered on a perceived insult to the prophet Mohammed, I believe that the remarks were directed at a more recent figure, Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian writer active in the Muslim Brotherhood in the mid-20th century whose writings are widely read in the Islamic world…
Part I in this series discussed how there is an important distinction between “tolerance” and “freedom.” Justin, in a subsequent email to me, described it this way: Tolerance asserts authority; freedom implies autonomy, perhaps even precedence. Part II in this series noted how both the role of religion in the public square of our society…
In a comment to the Part I posting, Joe Mahn writes: …From my simple perspective and I think in the context of the actual events of the time religious freedom meant that no State in the Union under the Constitution could force, by law, any citizen to participate in, confess, or otherwise practice any particular…
Do we believe in reason and the ability to distinguish between right and wrong? Do we believe in and teach the uniqueness of our Western Civilization tradition? Or, has the relativism of multiculturalism dumbed it all down to where there are no standards of excellence or truth discoverable by some combination of reason or faith?…
This posting continues a conversation begun with the previous posting entitled Religious Without Being Morally Serious Vs. Morally Serious Without Being Religious. Rather than the canard of there being some remnant trying to establish a theocracy in America, I would suggest there is a different dynamic going on. The culture war led by the secular…
The Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web nails this story about Pat Robertson: Since we’ve defended the “religious right,” we suppose we’d better say a word about Pat Robertson’s latest foolishness, as reported by the Associated Press: Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson called on Monday for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him…
For my column — which will now be appearing every other Wednesday — I pondered the formation of London’s homegrown Muslim terrorists: “Exploding Across Arm’s-Length Tolerance.” The bottom line is that the common thread that runs through the astute explanations — the root cause, if you will — is disengagement. And pushing religion, and the…
Hugh Hewitt has written an important article entitled Real Religious Intolerance. In the article, he provides a speech by American Roman Catholic Archbishop Chaput that is worthy of reading in full: The Los Angeles Weekly’s “The New Blacklist” is author Douglas Ireland’s attempt to equate consumer boycotts of gay-themed entertainment sponsors with McCarthyism. That’s a…
In the May edition of Crisis Magazine, editor Brian Saint-Paul, offers this poignant reflection on the life of the late Pope John Paul II: In the end, it was a beautiful death. Surrounded by those who knew and loved him, within earshot of the cheering thousands who came to be near his broken body, John…
