Reading Time: < 1 minute Christian organizations like James Dobson’s Family Research Council (FRC) have recently taken action to reclassify themselves as churches—and the IRS has obliged. Now Congress would like to know why. Other non-church ministries granted “church” status include the Daystar network, even though they do not meet the clear IRS definition of a church, which is grounded […]
church and state
Posted inPolitics
Should the US government enforce separation of church and state?
Reading Time: < 1 minute The overwhelming majority of Americans support the strict separation of church and state when asked. Ninety-eight percent of nonbelievers support or strongly support strict separation, the highest percentage of all religious affiliations. Baptists are the least likely to support separation at 56%. To have Baptist opinion leading the opposition to church-state separation is interestingly at […]
Posted inPolitics
Christian activist: I ‘pray with’ Supreme Court justices ruling on my cases
Reading Time: 6 minutes If someone whose cases were in front of the Supreme Court had dinner and drinks with some of the justices right before the oral arguments took place, and then the Supreme Court voted in that person’s favor, would that be ethical? Of course not. There shouldn’t be any substantive interaction between judges and the people […]
Posted inThe Secular
Christian nationalists: Jesus must rule US government
Reading Time: 4 minutes A disturbing New York Times article about the increasing fusion of U.S. evangelical Christianity and right-wing politics reveals a growing aspirational narrative thrusting Jesus front and center in American government. It is the opposite of what America’s founding fathers envisioned for their new, secularly governed democratic republic based on Enlightenment values. Yet, fundamentalist Christians since […]
Posted inNews
Why aren’t churches paying taxes?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Churches have become deeply political spaces. Prior to the Christian Right’s integration into Republican politics in the 1980s, churches didn’t play a major role in campaigning. Evangelicals have reshaped that narrative, with movements such as the Moral Majority pushing the Christian Right into mainstream political battles. As the decades have worn on, the Christian Right […]
Posted inThe Secular
A penny saved: Why are churches tax-exempt?
Reading Time: 9 minutes Growing up in a small town in Michigan in the middle of the twentieth century, I heard this proverb frequently, and it always puzzled me. In elementary school, I earned a weekly allowance by performing household chores like mowing the lawn and drying and putting away the dishes as my mother washed them. My income […]
Posted inPolitics
How a critical thinking deficit aids fascism…and religion
Reading Time: 5 minutes Why do so many Americans embrace such outlandish and patently false ideas these days? Partly because they were never taught critical-thinking skills.
Posted inGeneral, Politics, The Secular
‘The Nation’ normalizing astrology is like ‘Mother Jones’ endorsing junk food
Reading Time: 5 minutes The Nation is an august progressive magazine. Then, why is it normalizing astrology and horoscopes? It can’t actually believe that stuff, can they?
Posted inGeneral, Philosophy, The Secular
U.S. Christians decrying public shaming are pots calling kettles black
Reading Time: 5 minutes Public shaming is as Christian as crosses symbolizing the crucifixion. So Christians condemning public shaming in other contexts is hypocrisy.
Posted inPolitics, The Secular
Cardinal Burke yet another religious leader laid low by Covid after dissing vaccines
Reading Time: 4 minutes Disinformation about Covid-19 and its vaccines, as that perpetrated by now-infected Cardinal Raymond Burke, causes needless suffering and death.