In the perennial debate about the place of religion in politics and public life, one available stance is: “Everyone is religious.” This position has weaknesses, which I will mention below, but here are three points in its favor: Ethical people hold beliefs that are hard, if not impossible, to justify with empirical evidence. For example, I believe that […]
In The Atlantic just before the New Year, Michael Wear–an evangelical who helped Barack Obama with “faith outreach”–offered a critical assessment of the Democrats’ relationships with Evangelicals, 81% of whom supported Trump in 2016. Wear argued that it is a civic obligation to strive to engage all sectors of the society, and it’s a political necessity to engage religious […]
If we set aside the invidious motivations for–and the details of–the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it does raise some fairly complex constitutional questions. Here are five theories that one might adopt in response: 1. The law should ban private discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. To deny a regular service to a citizen because […]
What should a university do when a religious student group applies internal rules that are discriminatory? For example, theologically conservative Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox Christian, and Muslim groups may want to discriminate against gay students or may maintain that clerical roles are only open to men and expect their lay student leaders to endorse those […]
I am in DC for NAEP meetings. My post of the day is over at the CIRCLE site, where I track the rates of religious attendance for young adults and older adults. Regular attendance has declined, especially for youth, but remains fairly common. The proportion who believe in God has also declined, yet just 4.1% […]