I’ve seen a variety of posts on social media about the recently-opened Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. While some have been pointing out the legal problems surrounding how the museum has acquired some of its artifacts, others contest how the museum presents its material. In other words, there are those who see it as nothing less than “evangelical propaganda” — and some of those holding this position seem to be scholars of the bible. […]
Tag: Hobby Lobby
For Members Only
I recall, in the Fall of 2015, a job ad appearing on our main professional online site for a pastor for a church. Then, not long after, I saw an ad there for someone to co-write a “15-20 page paper … on the theology and praxis of the engineering profession for it’s Christian members.” Both times I wrote our association’s leadership questioning why our site was judged a relevant place for such a listing. And now, not long ago, news […]
Keeping it Private — or Not
A recent development, reported here, nicely illustrates the socio-political function of privacy, e.g., the (once?) widespread notion that those claims on behavior that were said to be premised on religious belief are merely a private affair concerning faith, sentiment, etc. For now this once common presumption is being troubled — inasmuch as the U.S. Supreme Court seems to be gradually dismantling it, in favor of allowing (just some) such claims to warrant exemptions from federal law. But once this notion […]
How Do You Define “Minister”?
In light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, in which “closely held,” for-profit corporations now seem to have religious rights, it raises some questions about the extent to which employers can determine elements of their employees’ behavior — whether on the job or not. […]
Big R and Little r
I recently wrote a review essay on the current state of scholarship on the category “religion” for the European history of religions journal, Numen (which comes out in 2015, I gather). It was fun to write, since its been 20 years since I first wrote a review essay on the same topic — “just how far have we come?” now becomes the question. […]
Misdirection
The blogosphere is lighting up in response to yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that some “closely held” corporations can be considered to have “sincerely held religious beliefs” (i.e., those of their owners, of course, and not those of their employees) worth protecting — and, voila, some corporations can now be exempt from certain aspects of federal law due to religious exemptions. (Read the so-called “Hobby Lobby” decision here.) […]
Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
Are you following the case in the U.S. that’s now being argued before the Supreme Court, on whether a corporation has religious freedom protections? It involves a chain of over 600 craft supply stores, in 47 states, and whether, under the new health care law (commonly known as “Obamacare”), it is required by the federal government to pay for certain forms of birth control that the owners of the corporation claim their religious beliefs lead them to understand as abortion. […]