Reading Time: 5 minutes In the days since Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed during a football game and had to be taken to a hospital in Cincinnati, some people have used his near-fatal injury as a vessel to spread their particular flavor of Christianity via prayers, distracting from more pressing issues and denying credit from the medical personnel […]
The Flare
Posted inLaw
Convicts who killed atheist author and publisher escape custody in Bangladesh
Reading Time: 3 minutes Yet another injustice against freethought has taken place in Bangladesh, where two men sentenced to death for murdering an atheist author and his publisher were able to escape police custody. The men were members of a terrorist group called Ansarullah Bangla Team (“Helpers of Allah”). In 2015, atheist author Dr. Avijit Roy was hacked to death […]
Posted inPolitics
Profile: The Federalist Society
Reading Time: 3 minutes The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, or the Federalist Society for short, is a conservative legal organization. It was originally founded in 1982 by law school students at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Chicago’s law school programs. Their goal was to challenge the perceived liberal bias of American law schools, and […]
Posted inPolitics
Boris Johnson resigns: the rat sinks as the ship flees
Reading Time: 9 minutes Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, has resigned. He has presided over the 7th shortest Prime Ministerial reign, a time that has been rocked by scandal after scandal. How did we get here? Left with hardly any fingernails left as he gripped tenuously to power, this morning’s fresh wave of government resignations left him with […]
Posted inThe Flare
Mass shootings in America: Why does the U.S. continue to do nothing?
Reading Time: 9 minutes Hungerford, England, 1987. 16 people were killed by a lone gunman. The Conservative government introduced the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988, making registration mandatory for owning shotguns and banning semi-automatic and pump-action weapons. There was a huge firearm amnesty. Dunblane, Scotland, 1996. 16 children died in another rare UK shooting. The Conservative government passed a ban […]
Posted inNews
Student to receive $90K settlement after Pledge of Allegiance lawsuit
Reading Time: 2 minutes Although our public institutions are supposed to promote free speech and the separation between church and state, there is increasing pressure from religious groups to bring God back into the classroom. When such groups, or even sympathetic teachers or administrators get their way, secular students can face punishments that adversely affect their education. That’s exactly […]
Posted inPolitics
Why does Christianity still dominate the Democratic Party?
Reading Time: 6 minutes When you think of Christian nationalism, Republican social conservatives probably come to mind, and for good reason. In 2020, President Trump won 59% of those who attended religious services at least monthly. Among white Americans, that number jumped to 71%. Although infamously impious himself, Trump made a point of pandering to evangelical Christians as much […]
Posted inNonreligious News
An atheist called out religious hate speech. Facebook punished him for it.
Reading Time: 2 minutes YouTuber and podcaster Seth Andrews recently received a 30-day suspension from Facebook for the crime of… calling out the bigotry of a Christian hate-preacher. And since I accidentally played a role in his banishment, it seems worth chiming on what a horrible move this is on the part of Facebook (and its parent company Meta). […]
Posted inNews
What are Christian nationalists fighting for?
Reading Time: 4 minutes In 1980, the Christian fundamentalist Jerry Falwell, Sr. gave a sermon to the church he founded. The sermon was fiery, and Falwell condemned his political opponents as morally bankrupt. “We’re fighting a holy war,” he roared. “What’s happened to America is that the wicked are bearing rule. We have to lead the nation back to […]
Posted inNews
It’s either Christian nationalism or democracy. You can’t have both
Reading Time: 4 minutes In the days before President Biden addressed the nation to commemorate the violent attack on the US Capitol by conservative rioters, commentators speculated on the President’s likely message. Would he stick to memorializing the dead and affirming a commitment to democracy, or point directly at the cause? In the end, Biden opted for direct, offering […]