“Narrow Rulings” Mean Little to the Christian Right Give them an inch, they’ll take a mile
Scare tactics are an important weapon in the assault on church-state separation. This was on display in the American Humanist Association’s recent Supreme Court argument challenging the so-called Peace Cross, a forty-foot Latin cross towering... Read More
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Gospel of Rape and Redemption
“Won’t people get mad if we criticize religion in our presentation?” my student asked. She was referring to the prevalence of sexual abuse allegations against religious leaders and my recommendation that we talk about them... Read More
Learning Right from Wrong: How to Teach the Bible in Public Schools
“Exposure to the Bible has an almost magical influence against crime and the moral/ethical slide of our youth and our nation,” wrote Dr. Robert L. Simonds in a 1996 article published by the Institute for... Read More
Slavery Was Once for Many a “Sincerely Held Belief”
When the editor of this publication reached out to inquire if she could publish a version of my letter to the editor of my local paper concerning a resolution passed in my county, I had... Read More
Earth Over the Brink
Glacier National Park is drip, drip, dripping into a puddle. People and companies and governments are cutting down trees to burn them to save the planet from global warming, mixing the sacrificial trees with oh-so-clean... Read More
Living with Geoengineering Injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere would cool the planet considerably, so what’s holding us back? Quite a few things.
This past October the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report saying that our current course will produce catastrophic results across the planet, including substantial sea level rise, by 2040. Another study focused... Read More
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Turns Seventy
This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris, France, on December 10, 1948, as General Assembly Resolution 217A and translated... Read More