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Justice

How A Right-Wing CEO’s Big Mouth Could Kill His Attack On Birth Control

By Ian Millhiser on Apr 15, 2013 at 3:00 pm

Eden Foods is one of several for-profit corporations challenging Obama Administration rules requiring most employer-provided health plans to cover birth control, on the questionable legal theory that Eden is immune to these rules because its owner has religious objections to birth control. According to Eden’s legal complaint, Eden’s owner “Michael Potter holds religious beliefs that prevent him from participating in, paying for, training others to engage in, or otherwise supporting contraception, abortion, and abortifacients.”

In an interview with Salon’s Irin Carmon, however, Potter’s supposed religious beliefs are unusually absent. Rather, Carmon quotes Potter raising objections to the birth control rules that have nothing whatsoever to do with his faith:

“I’ve got more interest in good quality long underwear than I have in birth control pills,” [Potter] said to me. . . . [I] asked why he said he didn’t care about birth control, since he filed a suit about it and all.

“Because I’m a man, number one and it’s really none of my business what women do,” Potter said. So, then, why bother suing? “Because I don’t care if the federal government is telling me to buy my employees Jack Daniel’s or birth control. What gives them the right to tell me that I have to do that? That’s my issue, that’s what I object to, and that’s the beginning and end of the story.” He added, “I’m not trying to get birth control out of Rite Aid or Wal-Mart, but don’t tell me I gotta pay for it.”

The reason why these quotes matter is because there is nothing in federal law allowing someone to sue because they generally object to having the government tell them what to do — if that were the case, speed limits, workplace safety laws and the minimum wage would all be illegal. Instead, a federal law known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) permits people to challenge federal laws only when those laws “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion.” Potter can’t get into federal court because he does not like the birth control law, he can only get into court if he has a religious objection to birth control. And yet, here he is telling a reporter that “the beginning and end” of his objection to the Obama Administration’s rules is that he does not think the federal government should have the power to tell him to provide certain benefits to his employees — not that he believes that such laws burden his faith.

If Potter does not actually object to the birth control rules on religious grounds, then that’s the end of his case. As a federal appeals court explained in a decision that is binding upon the judge hearing the Eden Foods case, a plaintiff may only invoke the protections of RFRA when a law burdens “a religious belief rather than a philosophy or way of life,” and when the plaintiff’s purported religious belief is “sincerely held.”

As we have previously explained, the case for allowing for-profit corporations to claim that they are immune to federal law on religious groups is very weak — at least under current law. In the Eden Foods case, however, there may not be a need to reach the broader question of whether a for-profit company can immunize itself from the law because of its owner’s religious views. Based on Carmon’s reporting, it’s not at all clear that Potter actually holds the religious beliefs that make up the backbone of his case.

Justice

Poll: One in Three Americans Support Establishing Christianity As Their Official State Religion

By Ian Millhiser on Apr 11, 2013 at 10:10 am


Following up on a failed effort by eleven North Carolina lawmakers to declare that their state can ignore the Constitution’s ban on government establishments of religion, a Huffington Post/YouGov poll finds that just over one in three American adults would actually support making Christianity their state’s official faith. The same poll shows that only 11 percent of the country incorrectly believes that the Constitution would permit such an outcome.

Security

How South Asia’s ‘Hardline Buddhists’ Threaten Muslim Communities

By Hayes Brown on Mar 29, 2013 at 3:00 pm

The term “hardline Buddhist” may seem like an oxymoron, but it accurately describes the movement currently leading attacks on Muslim communities in South Asia. So far, though, the United States has done little to pressure the governments in question to halt the violence, to the chagrin of human rights activists.

Sri Lanka, where 69 percent of the population is Buddhist, is home to a small community of Muslims who kept a low-profile during the country’s lengthy civil war. Recently, however, a number of hardline Buddhist groups have sprung up, stirring anti-Muslim fervor among the majority Sinhalese ethnic group. These groups — that call themselves names like the Buddhist Strength Force and Sinhala Echo — accused the minority community of producing exam results “distorted to favor Muslims” and claimed that calves had been slaughtered indoors — which is illegal in the country’s capital. Neither claim has borne out, but they have led to mass protests and attacks against Muslims and their communities.

Most recently, a Buddhist monk-led mob in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, swarmed and assaulted a Muslim-owned clothing warehouse on Thursday:

The BBC’s Charles Haviland in Colombo said the monks led a crowd which quickly swelled to about 500, yelling insults against the shop’s Muslim owners and rounding on journalists seeking to cover the events.

Five or six were injured, including a cameraman who needed stitches.

Eyewitnesses said the police stood and watched although after the trouble spread they brought it under control.

Similar persecution is ongoing against Myanmar’s Muslim communities, who make up only four percent of the total population. In the face of spreading violence, also kicked up by hardline Buddhists, Burmese Muslims are fleeing their homes, leaving behind destroyed mosques and shops. At least 40 people have died in the clashes since March 20, as the fighting moves closer to the capital. These most recent attacks have left some 12,000 people displaced from their homes, according to the U.N.

Tomas Ojea Quintana, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on Myanmar human rights, on Thursday said he had “received reports of state involvement in some of the acts of violence,” earning himself a rebuke from the Burmese government. President Thein Sein on Thursday said that his government would use force if need be to clamp down on the violence, but only as a last resort.

The violence against Burmese Muslims in general has found a particular target in members of the Rohingya ethnic group. Stateless due to their status under a 1982 citizenship law, many Burmese believe the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. Because of this, the Rohingya have faced down violence and persecution for years, to the degree that some have called their situation a “genocide.” The group has caught the eye of hacktivist group Anonymous, which is now claiming credit for promoting more awareness of the Rohingya’s plight.

At present, the U.S. has backed President Thein’s call for calm, but not commented on the violence in Sri Lanka, nor taken apparent action to pressure either government to halt the attacks. This echoes previous instances of violence, such as in Sept. 2012, when the State Department urged Bangladesh to keep its borders open as Rohingya fled from Myanmar. President Obama, during his Nov. 2012 visit to Myanmar, called for greater protection of minorities in the country. So far, this call hasn’t not seemed to be heard in Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

(Photo: A destroyed mosque in Okpho, Myanmar. Credit: Ye Aung Thu/AFP/Getty Images)

Health

Boston College Threatens Disciplinary Action Against Students Who Distributed Condoms

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Mar 27, 2013 at 11:12 am

A group of students has been distributing contraceptives and information about safe sex in 18 Boston College dorm rooms for two years. But on March 15, the school decided it was time to put an end to the practice, and sent a letter threatening disciplinary action to the safe sex network, dubbed ‘Safe Sites.’ The letter said that the contraception distribution violated their “responsibility to protect the values and traditions of Boston College as a Jesuit, Catholic institution.”

Boston College itself offers contraception as part of its student health plan, as required by Massachusetts law. But students who run the Safe Sites program can’t follow their school’s precedent, and must discontinue distributing condoms, or face the school’s office of student conduct, the Boston Globe reports:

The letter, signed by Dean of Students Paul J. Chebator and George Arey, director of residence life, says that “while we understand that you may not be intentionally violating University policy, we do need to advise you that should we receive any reports that you are, in fact, distributing condoms on campus, the matter would be referred to the student conduct office for disciplinary action by the University.”

Safe Sites are sponsored by the Boston College Students for Sexual Health (BCSSH), a group that works to improve sexual health education and resources for students at BC. The group is not recognized by the university.

The American Civil Liberties Union has said that it might consider bringing a legal complaint against the University if it chooses to proceed with disciplinary action. They claim the school “may be violating student rights.”

Studies have shown that condom distribution, at least at the High School level, does not increase the amount of intercourse young people have. It does, however, lead to a rise in condom use and thus encourages safe sex practices that not only limit unintentional pregnancies, but also cut down on the amount of sexually transmitted infections — a big problem on college campuses, including Jesuit ones.

Fighting contraception access has been a bit of a hobby horse for religious universities in recent years, particularly with the controversy over the birth control mandate that was a part of Obamacare. One Catholic university is even dropping its student health care coverage altogether to avoid potentially offering contraception to students one day down the line.

Economy

Faith Leaders Across America Protest Budget Cuts To Programs That Help The Poor

By Travis Waldron on Mar 20, 2013 at 12:10 pm

A collection of faith groups will today hold protest actions across the country calling on Congress to pass a budget that invests in programs to help low-income Americans instead of giving tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations. The coalition will hold 21 events in 13 states, according to a release from Faith in Public Life, encouraging Congress “to protect families and seniors, reject austerity, and remind them we have enough for all in this country.”

As part of the event, leaders will deliver loaves of bread and fish to Congress, a play on the Biblical story in which Jesus fed 5,000 hungry people with bread and fish. That took “a miracle,” the groups said in a release, but “it doesn’t take a miracle for Congress to pass a moral budget.”

“In Jesus’ time, it took a miracle to feed all the hungry. But today in America, we have enough resources to feed everyone, house everyone, and educate everyone if our leaders have the political will to put the common good before tax breaks for big corporations and the super wealthy,” Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, Director of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness, said in a release from Faith in Public Life. “Congress needs political courage, not miracles, to pass a just and moral budget that makes the wealthy pay their fair share and protects struggling families from further hardship.”

One of the events will take place outside the district office of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the author of the House Republican budget that would grant tax cuts to the wealthy while finding two-thirds of its budget cuts from programs that help the poor. Faith leaders criticized that budget as “immoral and counter to our values” when it was released last week, and faith groups like the Nuns on the Bus campaign have targeted Ryan and other Republicans for their insistence on similar budget cuts in the past.

The coalition includes interfaith, Christian, and Jewish groups, including the PICO National Network, Interfaith Workers Justice, and NETWORK, the Catholic social justice lobby that organized the Nuns on the Bus campaign.

Election

No, Conservatives, America Isn’t A Christian Nation: The Rise Of Religious Diversity

By Ruy Teixeira, Guest Blogger on Mar 19, 2013 at 12:17 pm

In conservatives’ preferred vision of America, we are a white Christian nation. And it is true that in the not too far distant past, we were, at least in numerical terms, an overwhelmingly white Christian nation.  In 1944, 80 percent of adults were white Christians.  But things have changed a lot since then.  Today only about 52 percent of adults are white Christians. By 2024, that figure will be down to 45 percent. That means that by the election of 2016, the United States will have ceased to be a white Christian nation. Looking even farther down the road, by 2040 white Christians will be only around 35 percent of the population and conservative white Christians, who have been such a critical part of the GOP base, only about a third of that—a minority within a minority.

Part of this of course is the inexorable march of race-ethnic change.  The white share of the population is declining at a rate of about a half percentage point a year and is expected to continue to do so for the next several decades.  But the other part of the shift away from white Christians is less well-understood: the rise of religious diversity.

There are two components to the rise of religious diversity: (1) increasing numbers of Americans who practice a non-Christian faith; and (2) increasing numbers of Americans who are secular or unaffiliated with any religion.  A recent Pew report sheds light on these important trends.

The Pew report aggregates data from their surveys between 2007 and 2012.  They found that those of non-Christian faiths have gone up from 4 to 6 percent over the time period, while those who are religiously unaffiliated have gone from 15 to nearly 20 percent of adults.  This is an astonishing rate of change, particularly for the unaffiliated who, according to some projections, were only supposed to hit 20 percent around the middle of the next decade.  This group’s growth is clearly way ahead of expectations.

Part of the reason for this rapid growth is generational.  Pew’s study notes that, among the youngest Millennial adults—those born 1990-1994, over a third (34 percent) have no religious affiliation.

There are significant social and political implications to these trends.  Pew and other data consistently show how liberal the unaffiliated are, particularly on social issues.  And they vote that way: in the 2012 exit poll, the unaffiliated supported Obama over Romney, 70-26.  In addition, those of non-Christian faiths supported Obama by 72-27.  To add to conservatives’ woes, their strongest group, white evangelical protestants (78-21 Romney) actually declined by 2 percentage points in the 2007-2012 time period.

Even conservatives should be able to do the math.  It’s time to give up on America as a white Christian nation and fully embrace its diversity–race-ethnic and religious.

Politics

New Pope Elected

By Igor Volsky on Mar 13, 2013 at 3:14 pm

The Catholic cardinals have elected a new pope on Wednesday after just two days of deliberations, selecting 76-year-old Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio on the fifth vote. He has taken the name of Francis and was not considered to be one of the front runners. He is the first Jesuit pope and the first non-European pope since the 8th century.

Bergoglio has affirmed church teaching on homosexuality, contraception and abortion and is considered to be among the most conservative in Latin America. In 2010, for instance, Bergoglio stated that same-sex adoption is a form of discrimination against children and has said that same-sex marriage is “a scheme to destroy God’s plan” and “a real and dire anthropological throwback.” He strongly opposed legislation introduced in 2010 by the Argentine Government to allow for marriage equality, writing a letter warning that it would “gravely harm the family.”

However, Bergoglio has focused on helping the poor throughout his career, noting, “The suffering of innocent and peaceful continues to slap us, the contempt for the rights of individuals and peoples are so far away, the rule of money with his demonic effects as drugs, corruption, trafficking people, including children, along with material and moral poverty are big problems.”

In 2001, upon becoming cardinal, Bergoglio “discouraged people from spending the money to fly to Rome to celebrate with him and advised that they instead donate the funds to help alleviate poverty at home.” He lived in a simple apartment, cooked his own food, and traveled by bus instead of a chauffeured limousine.

However, Bergoglio has been criticized by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) for his behavior during the 1976-1983 dictatorship in Argentina, with some journalists claiming that he prevented human rights groups from finding political prisoners by imprisoning them in his vacation home.

During the period of the dictatorship, the Catholic Church failed to confront the regime, even as it was kidnapping and killing thousands. The church eventually issued a blanket apology for its actions in October of 2012, though Bergoglio “invoked his right under Argentine law to refuse to appear in open court” to address two cases in which he was directly involved. When he did testify in 2010, his “answers were evasive,” human rights activists claim.

It has been 1,272 years since a non-European pope led the Church, and is particularly appropriate today, as the number of Catholics have declined in Europe, but grown significantly throughout Latin America. It is now home to 41 percent of Catholics and is “perceived as a Catholic bedrock that needs support to counter the tremendous growth of Protestantism. ”

White smoke billowed from the Sistine Chapel at 7:07 PM at Vatican City, as the crowd cheered loudly in anticipation. The inaugural mass for the new Pope could take place as early as this week.

Climate Progress

Will The Next Pope Tackle Climate Change?

By Matt Kasper, Guest Blogger and Jack Jenkins, Guest Blogger on Mar 12, 2013 at 11:39 am

Solar panels at the Vatican (Photo credit: AP)

The world is anxiously waiting for the College of Cardinals to select the next Bishop of Rome, especially the planet’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics. The faithful have good reason to be anxious: After all, the new pope will have to address a number of polarizing issues within the Catholic Church.

In addition to the challenges of ecclesiastical governance, however, there also exists an opportunity for the next pope to address an issue affecting the entire world community, both Catholics and non-Catholics alike: the urgent threat of climate change.

The destructive impact of climate change has been felt not only in the United States through droughts and floods and sea level rise, but also in communities around the world. The science suggests that its effects will only worsen, intensifying the hardships experienced by the poor and vulnerable. In the midst of this global crisis, the next pope is poised to become a key voice on the issue of climate change by helping the international community find solutions to the climate crisis.

The compulsion for the pope to act on climate change isn’t just based in science. It’s also rooted in theology: Catholic teaching insists that believers put the poor and vulnerable first, and inaction to save the most susceptible is considered immoral. Indeed, it has been 13 years since Pope John Paul II gave his 1990 World Day of Peace Message, saying:

“[A]n adequate solution cannot be found merely in a better management or a more rational use of the earth’s resources, as important as these may be. Rather, we must go to the source of the problem and face in its entirety that profound moral crisis of which the destruction of the environment is only one troubling aspect…

The ecological crisis reveals the urgent moral need for a new solidarity, especially in relations between the developing nations and those that are highly industrialized… I wish to repeat that the ecological crisis is a moral issue.”

Pope John Paul II’s words were more than just a symbolic prayer: both he and Pope Benedict XVI used their position and the power of the Vatican to elevate the moral case for action on climate change.

Read more

Health

Faith Leaders Pray For Restored Access To Women’s Health Resources In Texas

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Mar 11, 2013 at 10:45 am

Faith leaders in Texas pray to restore women's health resources

Over the past year, Texas officials have attacked women’s health resources from all angles — slashing funding from family planning programs, cutting off funds to the Planned Parenthood affiliates in the state, and attempting to shut down dozens of abortion clinics. Those decisions have jeopardized thousands of low-income women’s access to affordable health care, and faith leaders are praying for Texas to reverse its course.

Religious leaders in Texas joined together last week to emphasize that women’s health is a religious issue. Jewish and Christian leaders prayed for increased access to preventative health services, like family planning programs and birth control, in a state that has become increasingly hostile to women’s health care:

Gathered in the rotunda of the Texas Capitol Extension, leaders from Christian and Jewish faiths voiced frustration with funding for women’s health care services. Their prayer included a plea to state lawmakers to restore the $73 million cut from family planning services during 2011 and to make contraception more readily available to low-income women.

“For us this is part of our faith commitment that cares for all of God’s creation, all of God’s people,” said Larry Bethune, pastor of University Baptist Church in Austin. “Particularly for the stability of families and for the care of women and their health.”

“We believe that women should have and families should have the opportunity to make choices about when they’re going to have children and how many children they’re going to have,” said Bethune. “Women need to have access to health care, to good counsel and to clinics that can provide that health care before, during and after pregnancy.”

The faith leaders criticized Texas officials for targeting Planned Parenthood in their ongoing crusade against abortion — a crusade that has had far-reaching implications for the poor women in the state who must now search for new doctors. Planned Parenthood is the state’s largest health care provider for low-income women, but Texas Republicans have been so focused on cutting ties with the national organization that they have forced the closure of dozens of unaffiliated health clinics and have ultimately eliminated $30 million in federal funding for women’s health services.

“I think the abortion issue, it’s just part of a continuing culture war,” Rabbi Neal Katz told a local ABC News affiliate. “But I do believe that it’s a distraction from the issue that we’re trying to focus on, which is women having access to good health care, to family planning, to birth control.”

Despite the Religious Right’s attempt to use abortion as a wedge issue, reproductive rights are not actually incompatible with faith communities. Most religious groups support women’s right to legal abortion services under Roe v. Wade, and many people of faith — including Catholics and evangelicals — support expanding women’s access to birth control.

Alyssa

What SNL’s ‘Djesus Uncrossed’ Skit Got Right About Violent Trends In Christianity

By Jack Jenkins, Guest Blogger on Feb 27, 2013 at 1:13 pm

Saturday Night Live is known for its topical humor, but the weekend before last, it sparked debate by wading into theological controversy. In what Hero Complex suggested was the “most blasphemous skit in ‘SNL’ history,” the show drew fire for airing a skit that satirized Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained by using a premise that is possibly even more controversial than Tarantino’s original: What if Jesus Christ rose from the dead…To exact revenge? As a thumping big-budget soundtrack rocks in the background, a voiceover touts the film as “A less violent ‘Passion of the Christ’” and quips “He’s risen from the dead … and he’s preaching anything but forgiveness.”

The studio audience seemed to love the skit, but, as happens with many of SNL’s forays into religious satire, the skit sparked a firestorm of criticism from conservative Christians. Twitter and SNL’s website immediately lit up with complaints about the segment, with commenters decrying it as “blasphemous,” “offensive,” and “just wrong.” The Catholic League was also quick to weigh in, calling the skit “vicious” and “uncharacteristically bloody”. Conservative televangelist Pat Robertson, for his part, reviled the whole thing “anti-Christian bigotry that is just disgusting.”

But there is something peculiar about the outcry over the “DJesus Uncrossed”: Most of the complaints aren’t emanating from the progressive Christian pacifists. Instead, much of the criticism is coming from hyper-conservative Christian circles, a world that, oddly enough, includes voices that preach a vision of Jesus eerily similar to SNL’s gun-toting Messiah.

Though the image of Jesus mowing down victims with a machine gun horrifies many Christians—and rightfully so—others, like Patheos blogger David R. Henson, have pointed out that hidden in SNL’s bloody humor is a powerful satire of an overly-violent, hyper-masculine subculture that has begun to influence not just our popular culture, also multiple strains of Christian theology. Influential mega-pastor Mark Driscoll, for example, has become famous for saying that he believes in a Jesus who has a “commitment to make someone bleed.” He reportedly refuses to believe in a “hippie, diaper, halo Christ” because, as he puts it, “I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” Meanwhile, churches across America have started creating “Fight Club” groups for men, and several Christian communities are even basing services around Mixed Martial Arts fighting.
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Jack Jenkins is a writer and researcher for the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress.

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