Reading Time: 10 minutes Another term for the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has closed after a week of controversial rulings, and with the promise of a contentious Second-Amendment issue on the next session’s docket. In a bit of grim humor earlier this week, a social media meme proclaimed that, having mastered submarine engineering, keyboard warriors were currently getting their […]
church-state separation
Posted inEducation
UN Committee on Rights of the Child calls out religious bias in UK schools
Reading Time: 4 minutes While the UK may seem more secular than the US, the public education system is a good example of how this assumption is wrong.
Posted inThe Secular
A new secularism in Mexico: The coin is in the air
Reading Time: 8 minutes Mexico’s religious history is more complex and varied than most people realize, says researcher De la Torre—and a new shift is underway.
Posted inLaw
Bucksport (ME) removes Nativity scene after atheist asks for equal treatment
Reading Time: 3 minutes Bucksport, Maine can’t quite figure out what to do with a Nativity scene on public property now that an atheist has asked for similar treatment. For the past week, rather than allow a chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation to put up a secular display in the same location, they just took down the […]
Posted inLeaving Religion
Why the nonreligious need to disengage from the latest spiritual buzz
Reading Time: 4 minutes The Christian media empire, the institutional church, and faith-based progressive political organizations continue to promote false spiritual buzzworthy slogans such as “if you build a better church they will come,” “we’re on the cusp of a new kind of Christianity,” or “if you follow my way of being, you will receive spiritual enlightenment, sacred sexual […]
Posted inReligious News
Preacher claims he ‘dissolved’ his church’s tax-exemption for political gain
Reading Time: 3 minutes A week after telling his congregation that True Christians™ could not vote for Democrats, Christian hate-preacher Greg Locke announced on Sunday that he had “dissolved” his church’s tax-exemption with the IRS. I want everybody online to pay real close attention. I almost brought the document. I was gonna burn it right here on national television, […]
Posted inLaw
Kansas town to put ‘In God We Trust’ back on police cars—but there’s a twist
Reading Time: 3 minutes You knew it was too good to last. Two weeks ago, in Haven, Kansas, the city council asked the local police department to remove the “In God We Trust” decals from vehicles and to stop using their official Facebook page to promote Christianity. Council member Sandra Williams raising concerns about it, correctly noting that those […]
Posted inLaw
Supreme Court: Boston can’t reject a ‘Christian’ flag (but there’s an easy fix)
Reading Time: 8 minutes The Supreme Court ruled today that Boston officials violated a man’s free speech rights when it refused to erect his Christian flag outside City Hall. It was a unanimous decision from the mostly conservative Court, and the only silver lining here may be that the decision comes with rather simple solutions. Harold Shurtleff and his […]
Posted inLaw
How the NYT botched its coverage of the Supreme Court’s football prayer case
Reading Time: 8 minutes The New York Times‘ hit podcast The Daily published what should have been a straightforward episode on Wednesday morning about a controversial church/state separation case in front of the Supreme Court. Instead, they screwed up basic facts and leaned heavily on the Christian side of the debate. The case in question is Kennedy v. Bremerton […]
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 […]