SEPTEMBER 22, 2020 BY RICK SNEDEKER There is a flip side to the constitutional prohibition against “religious tests” for Americans seeking public office. It is that, once elected or appointed, those public officials also have a duty to not prioritize their religious beliefs over the secular requirements of serving the public good and accommodating the laws of Caesar, […]
BY HEMANT MEHTA JULY 7, 2020 A few months ago, when the seriousness of the pandemic was finally making itself known, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act allowing businesses to borrow money from the U.S. government in order to cover costs (including salaries) during the pandemic without having to repay those loans […]
JULY 11, 2020 BY RICK SNEDEKER Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, one of the ancient world’s most beautiful surviving examples of Eastern Orthodox Christian architecture, was on July 10 declared a Muslim mosque by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, secular Turkey’s populist, Islamist president. Erdogan’s bald political move pandering to his conservative, Islamist base in Turkey, after the Turkish Supreme Court […]
NOVEMBER 1, 2019 BY DAVID G. MCAFEE2 Netflix, HULU, Amazon Prime, and now… the Satanic Temple TV. You have probably heard of the Satanic Temple due to their activism – the religious group is well known for challenging state-sponsored Christianity and putting up their own controversial statues. They are also known for having to explain that […]
BY HEMANT MEHTA AUGUST 25, 2019 For more than six years, the city of Bloomfield, New Mexico tried defending an illegal stand-alone Ten Commandments monument outside a local municipal building. The monument was put up for overtly religious reasons in 2011, which is why it was ruled unconstitutional by multiple courts. Instead of accepting that result, […]