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Faith, Family and Life
75 posts, newest first (page 1 of 4).
Galileo, Mendel and a Belgian priest, the myth of faith at war with scienceThe idea that religion and science have always fought is a nineteenth-century story more than a fact, and the record shows a different picture. 'Religious liberty is a license to discriminate,' answered with the lawReligious-liberty law weighs the interests of third parties and has rejected many claims, so the slogan about a license to discriminate fails on the record. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the church that would not bow to the ReichA Lutheran pastor opposed Nazism from 1933 and was hanged in April 1945, and his life shows what faithful resistance asks of believers. Everson v. Board of Education, the school bus case that changed church and stateA 1947 ruling on bus fares applied the Establishment Clause to the states for the first time, and conservatives still argue about what it did. Massachusetts kept a state church until 1833, and the Constitution let itThe First Amendment bound only Congress in 1791, so states kept established churches for decades, and that history frames every Establishment Clause fight. Loving your country is not idolatry, a believer's case for patriotismChristians and Jews can love their country without worshiping it, and Scripture commands care for one's city; here is where patriotism ends and idolatry begins. Washington's 1789 and Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving proclamations side by sideTwo presidents, seventy-four years apart, called a nation to thank God, one at the founding and one in civil war, and their words still teach gratitude. Why newsrooms cover believers like a tribe they have never metCoverage often treats religious Americans as a bloc to be explained, not people with reasons, and fair coverage is not hard to describe. Ten questions families ask about adopting a child from another countryTen plain answers on treaty and federal rules for intercountry adoption, from the Hague Convention and visas to closed countries, costs and citizenship. What a state RFRA does and does not do, in twelve plain questionsTwelve plain answers on state religious freedom restoration acts, the compelling-interest test, Arizona's veto, Indiana's revision and how to find your own law. How to testify at your statehouse when an assisted-suicide bill is heardA step-by-step guide to finding the bill, signing up, writing a three-minute statement, meeting staff and following the vote, with no medical claims. How a small church can put its beliefs on paper before it is ever suedA step-by-step guide for congregations to document beliefs and policies now, because courts weigh what a church wrote down before the dispute began. A thought experiment where a federal agency replaces every church charityA labelled satire of a Department of Neighborliness shows what a federal program can supply and what only a congregation can. A thought experiment where the IRS fact-checks every Sunday sermonA labelled satire of a federal sermon-review office, anchored in the real Johnson Amendment, to show why government must never police the pulpit. Blasphemy laws abroad and why the First Amendment refuses themBlasphemy and apostasy laws abroad crush religious minorities, Muslim ones included, and the First Amendment protects believers by refusing them. 1915, the Armenian genocide and the Christian peoples who perished with themThe Ottoman campaign that began in 1915 destroyed Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christian communities, and America took a century to name it. How China's Communist Party licenses churches and jails pastorsChina guarantees belief on paper, runs worship through state-controlled bodies and punishes believers outside them, from Christians to Falun Gong. The 2016 genocide finding for Yazidis and Christians under ISIS ruleIn March 2016 the United States formally declared that ISIS was committing genocide against Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims, and the record shows why. The 1998 law that put religious persecution on America's foreign agendaThe International Religious Freedom Act created a commission, an ambassador and an annual report so that persecution abroad would stay on the official record. Eric Liddell would not run on Sunday, then won Olympic gold anywayThe Scottish sprinter gave up his best event in 1924 over a Sunday heat, won the 400 meters instead and spent his life as a missionary in China. The Sabbath is the oldest labor protection on record, so why do we mock it?The commandment to rest, extended even to servants, strangers and animals, is the first weekly limit on work, and a free people should prize it. Sunday closing laws, Orthodox Jewish merchants and the 1961 Sabbath rulingsIn 1961 the Court held Sunday closing laws secular rest laws even as they burdened Sabbath-observant Jews, and the cases still teach how pluralism works. William and Catherine Booth, the Salvation Army and soup, soap and salvationA Methodist preacher and his wife built a charity run like an army, and it reached America in 1880 and proved that faith can feed millions without Washington. Subsidiarity, the 1931 Catholic principle every federalist should knowPius XI's rule that a larger body must not take over what a smaller one can do is the moral twin of the Tenth Amendment, read passage by passage.
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