Campus Sexual Assault: a Case Study for Students and Administrators — Schools are bound to try to protect students from sexual assault under federal law Title IX, and more than 70 colleges being investigated for how they’ve handled sexual assault cases. This 6 min. audio clip overviews situations at Dartmouth and Georgetown.
Atheists Disallowed From County Commission Invocation
Atheists Disallowed From County Commission Invocation — Five members of the Brevard County Board of Commissioners (FL) voted unanimously Wednesday (Aug. 20) against permitting a local atheist from delivering a prayer or invocation before their public meetings. They also voted to limit remarks from nonreligious people to the “public comments” section of their meetings.
How Black and White Christians Think About Race
How Black and White Christians Think Differently About Race — Researched by Michael Emerson of Rice University and David Sikkink of Notre Dame (and released by the Association of Religion Data Archives), this Portraits of American Life Study found that divergent perceptions on race among black and white Christians have continued to widen since 2006.
NYC, Pre-K, and the Church-State Divide
NYC, Pre-K, and the Church-State Divide — Because of inadequate public school capacity, the de Blasio administration has been urging religious schools and community organizations to consider hosting added programs for the city. But the push is raising fresh questions about church-state issues and for the schools themselves.
Bibles are Back in Navy Guest Housing
Bibles Are Back in Navy Guest Lodges — In June, the U.S. Navy ordered housekeepers at thousands of Navy-owned guest lodges near U.S. and international bases to remove the Bibles and any other “religious materials” from their rooms. Scriptures would remain available on request.
The Wrong Kind of Christian
The Wrong Kind of Christian — Over the past two years, Vanderbilt University has enacted policy to exclude student groups based on leadership creedal belief and on sexual expression. Fourteen campus religious communities no longer have organizational standing including Catholic, Evangelical, and Mormon groups. Tish Harrison Warren describes her failed effort to reason with the […]
The Rhetorical Device of Assigned Mendacity
The Rhetorical Device of Assigned Mendacity — An instructive essay by Mark Bauerlein that can be used to alert students to a technique in discourse sometimes used to distract and discredit the religious perspective. This form of the indirect ad hominem occurs in policy debates and legal decisions and can be detected with a […]
A Secular Age 2.0
A Secular Age 2.0 — “Back in the ’70s, even while a lingering, residual religion still pervaded the atmosphere, the smart set was discovering that religion was a sham. But those were the ’70s, more specifically, the 1870s.” Matt Milliner at Wheaton reviews Minding the Modern: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge by Thomas […]
An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins from Lincoln, NE
An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins from Lincoln, NE — The writer responds to Dawkins’ recently advocating a moral imperative to abort children conceived with Down Syndrome and invites him to dinner. A possible starter for course content on ethics, public discourse, conflict resolution, the culture wars, and normative secularism.
Before “I Do”: Premarital Experiences and Marital Qualtiy
Before “I Do”: Premarital Experiences and Marital Quality — For almost one-third (32 percent) of those in a nationally representative sample, their relationship with their eventual spouse began as a hookup. And those who said their relationship began by hooking up reported lower marital quality than people who didn’t start their relationship that way, says […]
