Objective coverage of church-state and religious liberty developments, with extensive links to primary sources.
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Lenient Sentence Imposed on Muslim Man By Britain's Cherie Blair Brings Complaints
Street Preachers Challenge "Loud Noise" and Trespass Bans
Friday, February 05, 2010
Trial of Geert Wilders Proceeds With Pared Down Witness List
North Korea Says It Will Release U.S. Christian Activist
Slovakian Court Upholds Religion Law's Registration Requirement
Indonesia's Constitutional Court Hearing Challenge To Blasphemy Law
Groups Urge President To Beef Up Church-State Safeguards In Faith-Based Funding
On the one year anniversary of your Executive Order establishing the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, the undersigned religious, education, civil rights, labor, and health organizations write to urge that you take additional actions to prevent government-funded religious discrimination and protect social service beneficiaries from unwelcome proselytizing.The letter urged the White House to prohibit religious organizations from discriminating in hiring on the basis of religion within federally-funded social welfare projects. It also urged that the President amend existing Executive orders to ensure that:
Here are the releases on the letter issued by the ADL, Americans United and the Baptist Joint Committee, all of which were signatories.Program beneficiaries are not subject to unwanted proselytizing or religious activities.
Program providers give proper notice to beneficiaries of their religious liberty rights and access to alternative, secular providers.
Houses of worship and other religious institutions, in which religion is so integrally infused that it cannot be separated out, be required to create separate corporations for the purpose of providing secular, government-funded social services.....
Secular alternatives to social services provided by houses of worship and other religious institutions are readily available to beneficiaries.....
Uniform guidance and training materials be developed for all federal agencies to ensure that government-funded providers understand constitutionally-required religious liberty safeguards..... Furthermore, providers should be required to certify their adherence to the safeguards – and government agencies should engage in oversight to ensure compliance.
Deference Given To Hierarchical Determination in Church Property Dispute
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Secretary of State, President Speak At National Prayer Breakfast
President Barack Obama also spoke at length at the National Prayer Breakfast. (Full text of remarks.) Spotlighting the American people's response to the recent earthquake in Haiti, he said:All religions have their version of the Golden Rule and direct us to love our neighbor and welcome the stranger and visit the prisoner.... Yet across the world, we see organized religion standing in the way of faith, perverting love, undermining that message.
Sometimes it's easier to see that far away than here at home. But religion, cloaked in naked power lust, is used to justify horrific violence, attacks on homes, markets, schools, volleyball games, churches, mosques, synagogues, temples. From Iraq to Pakistan and Afghanistan to Nigeria and the Middle East, religion is used a club to deny the human rights of girls and women, from the Gulf to Africa to Asia, and to discriminate, even advocating the execution of gays and lesbians. Religion is used to enshrine in law intolerance of free expression and peaceful protest. Iran is now detaining and executing people under a new crime – waging war against God. It seems to be a rather dramatic identity crisis.
So in the Obama Administration, we are working to bridge religious divides. We’re taking on violations of human rights perpetrated in the name of religion. And we invite members of Congress and clergy and active citizens like all of you here to join us.... We are committed, not only to reaching out and speaking up about the perversion of religion, and in particularly the use of it to promote and justify terrorism, but also seeking to find common ground. We are working with Muslim nations to come up with an appropriate way of demonstrating criticism of religious intolerance without stepping over into the area of freedom of religion or non-religion and expression.
This is what we do, as Americans, in times of trouble. We unite, recognizing that such crises call on all of us to act, recognizing that there but for the grace of God go I, recognizing that life's most sacred responsibility -- one affirmed, as Hillary said, by all of the world's great religions -- is to sacrifice something of ourselves for a person in need.As urged by a number of people, Obama also spoke out against the harsh anti-gay legislation recently proposed in Uganda, reportedly at the urging of the same group that sponsored the Prayer Breakfast. (See prior posting.) The President said:
Sadly, though, that spirit is too often absent when tackling the long-term, but no less profound issues facing our country and the world. Too often, that spirit is missing without the spectacular tragedy ... that can shake us out of complacency. We become numb to the day-to-day crises, the slow-moving tragedies of children without food and men without shelter and families without health care. We become absorbed with our abstract arguments, our ideological disputes, our contests for power. And in this Tower of Babel, we lose the sound of God's voice.
We may disagree about the best way to reform our health care system, but surely we can agree that no one ought to go broke when they get sick in the richest nation on Earth. We can take different approaches to ending inequality, but surely we can agree on the need to lift our children out of ignorance; to lift our neighbors from poverty. We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are -- whether it's here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.
Court Refuses Interlocutory Appeal In Establishment Clause Challenge To AIG Bailout
Court Dismisses Challenge To Removal of Children From Tony Alamo Compound
Brazilian Court Overturns Ban on Religious Symbols In Rio's Carnival
BBC Follows Indonesian Sharia Police On Patrol
France Denies Citizenship To Muslim Man Who Forces Wife To Wear Face Veil
It became apparent during the investigation and the prior interview that this person was compelling his wife to wear the all-covering veil, depriving her of the freedom to come and go with her face uncovered, and rejected the principles of secularism and equality between men and women.Prime Minister Francois Fillon says he intends to sign the decree after consulting with the council of state as required by French law. Fillon said that the full-face veil "has no place in our country."
British Jews Unable To Develop Consensus For Legislative Change To School Admissions
Court Says Divorced Parents Must Share Religious Decisions For Children
To protect parents' respective constitutional rights to the free exercise of religion, Washington courts hold that a parent's decision-making authority with respect to religious upbringing may not be restricted unless there is "a substantial showing of actual or potential harm to the children from exposure to the parents' conflicting religious beliefs." In re Marriage of Jensen-Branch, 78 Wn. App. 482, 490, 899 P.2d 803 (1995). The court emphasized that "religious beliefs" should be interpreted in the broad sense of "world view" and that a parent's lack of religious belief receives the same amount of protection as any particular religious belief.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Federal Lawsuit Challenges Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009
Brought on behalf of three Christian pastors and the head of the American Family Association of Michigan, the complaint asserts that the Act "is an effort to eradicate religious beliefs opposing the homosexual agenda from the marketplace of ideas by demonizing, vilifying, and criminalizing such beliefs as a matter of federal law and policy." It claims that the federal aiding and abetting statute, along with the substantive provisions of the Hate Crimes Act, will subject plaintiffs to federal questioning, investigation and prosecution for preaching God's word.
The Thomas Moore Law Center, which represents plaintiffs, issued a long press release announcing the filing of the lawsuit. The lawsuit raises arguments that were debated at length during Congress' consideration of the bill. Proponents argued then that several provisions included in the bill adequately protect freedom of speech and religion. (See prior posting.)
European Human Rights Court Says Religion on Identity Cards Violates ECHR
Churches Have Some Greater Copyright Leeway This Year for Super Bowl Parties
Obama Urged To Use Prayer Breakfast To Denounce Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill
Meanwhile American Atheists joined other groups in urging the President and other key political leaders such as Sen. Harry Reid, to completely boycott the National Prayer Breakfast this year.