Religious Liberty - links
Bible Class Can Be Difficult, But Legal
Thursday, January 25, 2007 9:20 AM CST
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series looking at issues surrounding a proposed elective looking at the Bible as a cultural document. Friday’s report will examine the history of the Bible in the classroom.
By Amy Sherrill
TIMES RECORD • ASHERRILL@SWTIMES.COM
The Bible can be taught in a secular manner in public schools, according to law professors, First Amendment advocates and religious leaders, but teachers and school districts must walk a fine line to do it legally.
In Fort Smith Public Schools, no classes incorporate the study of the Bible in history and literature, but a Fort Smith group hopes that the school district adopts its proposal to do so.
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The Rev. Richard Land, Southern Baptist Convention, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said that a public school attempting to teach a course on the Bible is fraught with difficulties that are exacerbated because schools deal mostly with minors.
“A lot of these questions are different questions when you’re dealing with college students,” Land said. “Even as an elective course, I don’t know how you’re going to teach the Bible objectively and fairly in a secular school. If you teach it as a secular subject, well, that’s going to be perceived as being an approach to the Bible that is not balanced or fair by people of religious faith.”
He added that when the school board gets ready to make its decision, members should ask the litmus test question: If the school board is willing to have an elective course on the Bible, is it also willing to have an elective course on the Koran?
Jan 25, 2007
Topic: Faith, Bible, Family, Children, Education, Citizenship, Church and State, Religious Liberty
Pelosi Targets Grassroots Freedom of Speech
Human Events
Pelosi Targets Grassroots Freedom of Speech
by Amanda B. Carpenter
Posted Dec 18, 2006
House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) has pledged to take up a lobbying reform proposal that would impose new regulations on speech by grassroots organizations, while providing a loophole in the rules for large corporations and labor unions.
The legislation would make changes to the legal definition of “grassroots lobbying” and require any organization that encourages 500 or more members of the general public to contact their elected representatives to file a report with detailed information about their organization to the government on a quarterly basis.
The report would include identifying the organization’s expenditures, the issues focused on and the members of Congress and other federal officials who are the subject of the advocacy efforts. A separate report would be required for each policy issue the group is active on.
Dec 18, 2006
Topic: Citizenship, Church and State, Legislation, National, Religious Liberty
Newsweek Blog: Is America A ‘Christian Nation’?
BELOW TEXT IS FOR RECORD ONLY, NOT FOR PUBLICATION. NEWSWEEK OWNS EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO THIS CONTENT
Religious Americans Want Views Welcomed in Public Square
It is both inaccurate historically and inappropriate theologically to describe America as a “Christian nation.”
Historically, America was an attempt to establish a nation based broadly on Judeo-Christian values (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”) and Enlightenment ideas of self-government. In 1798, John Adams, the nation’s second president, said, “Our Constitution was made for a moral and a religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”
Theologically, a “Christian nation,” at least for Evangelical Christians, implies a nation where the vast majority of people are “converted” individuals who profess Christ as their personal Savior, a situation which has never been true in the United States, even when more than 90 percent of the population identified with some form of Protestant Christianity in 1790.
Lastly, one must make the distinction between “nation” and “government.” The nation encompasses the people and the society as a whole, as opposed to the government, which is merely the governing authority.
Most religious Americans believe in a secular government under the rubric of the First Amendment, but desire a religiously pluralistic, as opposed to a secular, society in which religiously informed viewpoints are welcomed in the public square on an equal basis with all other voices.
Posted by Richard Land on December 14, 2006 10:30 AM
Dec 15, 2006
Topic: Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Church and State, Religious Liberty
CNN - What is a Christian? (T-script)
CNN
ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES
What is a Christian?; New Moral Values; Evangelicals and Israel; End of Days; Capitalist Christian; The Seekers
Aired December 14, 2006 – 23:00 ET
As expert guests, Anderson will talk to Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Jim Wallis, author of “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It” and president of Sojourners, a progressive Christian ministry, along with Dwight Hopkins, a professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Dec 15, 2006
Topic: Faith, Bible, Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Church and State, Religious Liberty, Social Issues
God’s Country?
Walter Russell Mead
From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2006
Summary: Religion has always been a major force in U.S. politics, but the recent surge in the number and the power of evangelicals is recasting the country’s political scene — with dramatic implications for foreign policy. This should not be cause for panic: evangelicals are passionately devoted to justice and improving the world, and eager to reach out across sectarian lines.
Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Further reading for this article can be found at www.foreignaffairs.org/mead_reading.
Dec 12, 2006
Topic: Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Human Rights, Persecution, Religious Liberty, War
Court: Groups Must Offer Contraceptives
New York’s highest court ruled Thursday that social service agencies run by the Roman Catholic Church and other faiths must provide birth-control coverage to their employees, even if they consider contraception a sin.
Oct 23, 2006
Topic: Faith, Family, Life, Citizenship, Legislation, Religious Liberty
Boy Scouts suffer a legal setback in Supreme Court over discrimination
Six years after the Supreme Court ruled the Boy Scouts could ban gay leaders, the group is fighting and losing legal battles with state and local governments over its discriminatory policies.
Oct 20, 2006
Topic: Faith, Family, Abuse, Sexual Purity, Homosexuality, Citizenship, Church and State, Community Service, Human Rights, Legislation, Religious Liberty
Iraq’s Christians Flee as Extremist Threat Worsens
The blackened shells of five cars still sit in front of the Church of the Virgin Mary here, stark reminders of a bomb blast that killed two people after a recent Sunday Mass.
Oct 17, 2006
Topic: Faith, Citizenship, Persecution, Religious Liberty
Opera Canceled Over a Depiction of Muhammad
A leading German opera house has canceled performances of a Mozart opera because of security fears stirred by a scene that depicts the severed head of the Prophet Muhammad, prompting a storm of protest here about what many see as the surrender of artistic freedom.
Sep 27, 2006
Topic: Citizenship, Religious Liberty
Enough Apologies
Already, angry Palestinian militants have assaulted seven West Bank and Gaza churches, destroying two of them. In Somalia, gunmen shot dead an elderly Italian nun. Radical clerics from Qatar to Qom have called, variously, for a “day of anger” or for worshipers to “hunt down” the pope and his followers.
Sep 19, 2006
Topic: Faith, Citizenship, Religious Liberty