Obama supports plan for mosque near ground zero
Posted in Celeb, Islam, News, Politics, religion on August 14th, 2010 by admin – Comments Off
President Obama on Friday took a strong stand in favor of building a mosque near the site where Muslim terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, breaking his silence on a political tempest that has left the country divided.
Speaking at a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan, Obama framed the issue as one of religious freedom.
Muslims “have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country,” Obama said, according to a White House transcript. “That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”
Prop. 8 hangs by a legal thread
Posted in Crime, Education, News, Politics, economy, religion on August 13th, 2010 by admin – Comments OffU.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker on Thursday kept same-sex marriages on hold in California for at least another week, but suggested that top state officials’ support for gay marriage ultimately may doom any effort to revive Proposition 8.
Walker’s comments were the first public airing of a possibility that has been increasingly under discussion by legal experts — that the fight over the constitutionality of Proposition 8 might not be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, as many have expected. Instead the case could be brought to an end by the strict legal rules about who is allowed to pursue a dispute in federal court.
Walker’s remarks came in a ruling that would allow same-sex marriages to resume in the state after Aug. 18 unless an appeals court puts them on hold longer.
MSM tries to create fake controversy over a cross on a T-shirt
Posted in News, religion on October 27th, 2009 by admin – Comments Off
A T-shirt design that was intended to foster school spirit on the campus of Penn State University has become a center of media-brewed controversy that will likely fizzle out before ever catching fire.
The design, which was selected this year by Penn State students out of about two dozen entries, was created as part of an annual Penn State tradition, during which students don white clothing for a designated football game and fill their 107,282-seat stadium to capacity, thus “whiting out” supporters of the opposing team.
Made by Penn State senior Emily Sabolsky, this year’s winning design appeared on the official 2009 “White Out” shirts, which hit the shelves of the university’s bookstore ahead of this year’s “White Out” game against the University of Iowa.
Though the two-side design looks innocent enough, to some, the combination of the vertical blue stripe running down the center of the shirt’s front side along with the words “Penn State” cutting across the vertical beam appeared reminiscent of a cross.
And to a handful of students, the seemingly religious imagery on the shirt was reason enough to file complaints with the university and even to organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, which in turn contacted Penn State officials.
According to Bill Mahon, vice president of university relations, six people have voiced their objections to Penn State over the shirt design while around 30,000 shirts have so far been sold.
Despite the small number of complaints, the school’s newspaper and even Fox News picked up on the story and brought the alleged controversy into light to the surprise of many Penn State students.
In the responses that followed, a vast majority of students who weighed in on the issue were either supportive or indifferent of the shirt design, including the president of the Penn State Hillel, who told the student-run Collegian newspaper that her group of Jewish students was not going to complain.
“I don’t think we have a right to say what [the university] should or shouldn’t be doing,” Berns said, though she confessed that she does believe the shirt design does look like a cross.
In three letters that appeared in the Collegian on Monday, students further expressed how laughable the current controversy is and how it’s been blown out of proportion.
“While driving through Centre County, I saw power poles shaped like crosses. Advice to Allegheny Power: You’d better change your design before someone is offended,” wrote Penn State alumnus David Dimmick.
Recent graduate Steve Edling also mocked the current controversy, suggesting sarcastically that it was time to protest that all lowercase t’s be immediately stricken from campus as well.
“From this day forth, the words ‘Penn State’ shall be in all caps or never written at all, because crosses belong at Notre Dame and nowhere else,” he wrote.
Current Penn State student Nick Mangus, meanwhile, stated that one of the reasons why he left his home state of Virginia was “to distance myself from sheer amount of politically-correct shenanigans.”
“Seriously, grow up. Quit making yourselves look like loud-mouthed extremists,” he wrote.
Despite having received complaints, Penn State spokesman Mahon told Fox News that the 2009 “White Out” T-shirts will not be pulled from store shelves and that six complaints “is not a controversy.”
Penn State student Devon Edwards, who blogs on nittanywhiteout.com, also noted how the “issue” is actually a non-issue that it wasn’t an issue until last week.
“I don’t know a single person, Jewish, Christian, atheist, or anything, who objected to this shirt on religious or moral principles, or who took offense to it,” the student blogger wrote Monday.
“Honestly, I think it’s basically people just trying to stir up controversy over something that’s ridiculous,” he added, quoting the letter written by Mangus to the Collegian.
As Edwards noted, there are around 40,000 students at Penn State, an alumni association with close to 150,000 members, as well as countless other Penn State fans scattered across the country.
Penn State’s stadium, Beaver Stadium, is largest in the United States, the largest in North America, and the third largest in the world.
On the less controversial side of this year’s “White Out” T-shirt, it states “Don’t be intimidated … It’s just me and 110,000 of my friends.”
Freedom of religion under attack, LDS leader says
Posted in religion on October 13th, 2009 by admin – Comments Off
The free exercise of religion — as protected by the United States Constitution — is under attack, an LDS leader says, and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are being called upon to rally in its defense.
“There is a battle over the meaning of that freedom,” said Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve. “The contest is of eternal importance, and it is your generation that must understand the issues and make the efforts to prevail.”
He listed several examples of such current controversies regarding religious freedom — laws governing marriage and adoption, laws regulating activities of church-related organizations in furthering their religious missions, and laws prohibiting discrimination in employment circumstances against people with unpopular religious beliefs or practices.
The former University of Chicago law professor, Brigham Young University president and Utah Supreme Court justice acknowledged during his devotional talk Tuesday afternoon at BYU-Idaho’s Hart Auditorium that, thanks to the Internet age, his message would be received by an even wider, more diverse audience.
Christian principles of human worth and dignity made possible the Constitution’s formation more than 200 years ago, and only those principles in the hearts of a majority of a diverse American population can sustain the Constitution today, he said.
“Religious values and political realities are so interlinked in the origin and perpetuation of this nation that we cannot lose the influence of Christianity in the public square without seriously jeopardizing our freedoms,” he said.
“I maintain that this is a political fact, well qualified for argument in the public square by religious people whose freedom to believe and act must always be protected by what is properly called our ‘First Freedom,’ the free exercise of religion.”
The Constitution’s fundamental principle of popular sovereignty, which implies popular responsibility, allows individuals to act according to their moral agency and to be held accountable for those actions.
“In other words, the most desirable condition for the effective exercise of God-given moral agency is a condition of maximum freedom and responsibility — the opposite of slavery or political oppression,” Elder Oaks said.
The Constitution contains a prohibition against “an establishment of religion,” intended to prohibit a government-established church and avoid the types of national churches still found in Europe. The free “exercise” of religion, he added, involves rights to choose religious beliefs and affiliations and to practice those beliefs.
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“The inherent conflict between the precious religious freedom of the people and the legitimate regulatory responsibilities of the government is the central issue of religious freedom,” Elder Oaks said.
Elder Oaks described several threats to be faced and confronted in the future, one being the threat of denying of free speech and religious freedom.
He underscored recent changes in religious devotion nationally, including a rising intolerance of Christianity, the rejection of God’s existence or authority, the growing hostility of atheism and the intimidation of those with religious-based views from influencing or making state or federal laws.
“A second threat to religious freedom,” he said, “is from those who perceive it to be in conflict with the newly alleged ‘civil right’ of same-gender couples to enjoy the privileges of marriage.”
Elder Oaks referred to the aftermath of the majority-approved Proposition 8 state constitutional amendment in California’s 2008 election, defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Opponents criticized the LDS Church and its members, saying they were “denying” or “stripping” other of the “rights.”
“In fact, the Proposition 8 battle was not about civil rights, but about what equal rights demand and what religious rights protect,” he said. “At no time did anyone question or jeopardize the civil right of Proposition 8 opponents to vote or speak their views.
“The real issue in the Proposition 8 debate — an issue that will not go away in years to come and for whose resolution it is critical that we protect everyone’s freedom of speech and the equally important freedom to stand for religious beliefs — is whether the opponents of Proposition 8 should be allowed to change the vital institution of marriage itself.”
With traditional marriage the teaching of Judeo-Christian scriptures and the Western cultures’ core legal definition and practice for thousands of years, those seeking to change the foundation of marriage should not be allowed to pretend that those defending it are trampling on civil rights, Elder Oaks said.
“The supporters of Proposition 8 were exercising their constitutional right to defend the institution of marriage — an institution of transcendent importance that they, along with countless others of many persuasions, feel conscientiously obliged to protect,” he said.
“Any such effort to have governments invade religion to override religious doctrines or practices should be resisted by all believers.”
Elder Dallin H. Oaks offered five points of counsel to LDS members on how their conduct can enhance religious freedom in times of turmoil and challenge.
1. Speak with love, always showing patience, understanding and compassion toward adversaries.
2. Don’t be deterred or coerced into silence by intimidation, but instead insist on the constitutional right and duty to exercise one’s religion, to vote one’s conscience on public issues, and to participate in elections and debates.
And that should be accompanied by “a right to expect freedom from retaliation,” Elder Oaks said, listing the post-Proposition 8 reactions of vandalism, retaliation and harassments — including firings and boycotts — against LDS Church members and supporters from other faiths.
Noting that while such aggressive intimidation from the outrage against those who disagreed with the gay-rights position was directed at religious individuals and symbols, the incidents of violence and intimidation “are not so much anti-religious as anti-democratic,” he added.
3. Insist on the freedom to preach the doctrines of the LDS faith.
4. Be wise in one’s political participation, including the framing of arguments and positions in respectful ways.
5. Be careful never to support or act upon the idea that a person must subscribe to some particular set of religious beliefs in order to qualify for a public office.
Where Have All the Christians Gone?
Posted in Naples Stuff, News, Politics, Uncategorized, religion on September 29th, 2009 by admin – Comments OffWhere Have All the Christians Gone?
The number of people who claim no religious affiliation, meanwhile, has doubled since 1990 to fifteen percent, its highest point in history.
Christianity is plummeting in America, while the number of non-believers is skyrocketing.
A shocking new study of Americans’ religious beliefs shows the beginnings of a major realignment in Americans’ relationship with God. The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) reveals that Protestants now represent half of all Americans, down almost 20 percent in the last twenty years. In the coming months, America will become a minority Protestant nation for the first time since the pilgrims.
The number of people who claim no religious affiliation, meanwhile, has doubled since 1990 to fifteen percent, its highest point in history. Non-believers now represent the third-highest group of Americans, after Catholics and Baptists.
Other headlines:
1) The number of Christians has declined 12% since 1990, and is now 76%, the lowest percentage in American history.
2) The growth of non-believers has come largely from men. Twenty percent of men express no religious affiliation; 12% of women.
3) Young people are fleeing faith. Nearly a quarter of Americans in their 20’s profess no organized religion.
4) But these non-believers are not particularly atheist. That number hasn’t budged and stands at less than 1 percent. (Agnostics are similarly less than 1 percent.) Instead, these individuals have a belief in God but no interest in organized religion, or they believe in a personal God but not in a formal faith tradition.
The implications for American society are profound. Americans’ relationship with God, which drove many of the country’s great transformations from the pilgrims to the founding fathers, the Civil War to the civil rights movement, is still intact. Eighty-two percent of Americans believe in God or a higher power.
But at the same time, the study offers yet another wake-up call for religious institutions.
First, catering to older believers is a recipe for failure; younger Americans are tuning out.
Second, Americans are interested in God, but they don’t think existing institutions are helping them draw closer to God.
Finally, Americans’ interest in religion has not always been stable. It dipped following the Revolution and again following Civil War. In both cases it rebounded because religious institutions adapted and found new ways of relating to everyday Americans.
Today, the rise of disaffection is so powerful that different denominations needs to band together to find a shared language of God that can move beyond the fading divisions of the past and begin moving toward a partnership of different-but-equal traditions.
Or risk becoming Europe, where religion is fast becoming an afterthought.
Bruce Feiler is bestselling author of eight books, including “Walking the Bible” and “Abraham,” and the host of the PBS series on “Walking the Bible.” A frequent commentator on National Public Radio, CNN and FOX News. His latest book “America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story” will be published in October.
