Defending Religion From Religious Extremists

All Current Features

From Foreign Policy:  There is a growing threat to religious freedom around the globe. In an earlier era, the greatest hostility to faith came from secular autocracies or totalitarian regimes. But that has changed. Today, the most active persecutors of religious minorities and dissenters are religious extremists. In this still-young century, the world has witnessed […]

Scientists in Congregations

Natural Sciences

The program, Scientists in Congregations, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, sought to cultivate a conversation on science and faith within congregations. The Pascal Project, in honor of Blaise Pascal (1623–1662, the brilliant French mathematician often considered the first thinker to seriously consider the intersection of faith with the natural sciences) included 35 congregations.  See […]

Human Nature and Man in Crisis

Alan Jacobs reviews The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933-1973 by Mark Greif (Princeton University Press, 2015).  “For a long period in the mid-twentieth century, fundamental anthropology—the problematic nature of ‘man’—became a main rhetorical and contemplative current in the streams of thought and writing that shape a public philosophy.”

Discourse on Sex Identity and Gender Identity

These two articles on sex identity and gender identity are written by Christopher O. Tollefsen, Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and a senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute.  They may be useful for helping students identify the forms of the Aristotelian/Thomist arguments (Luther or Bonhoeffer take a different approach) that favor […]

Personhood, Ethics, and Planned Parenthood

This review of the Planned Parenthood incident and their use of abortion organs and tissue can help students consider several elements of the controversy and particularly why the issues continue to be intractable.  The discussion could be used with courses in research, journalism, ethics, psychology, pre-law, and other social sciences.

The Post-SSM Legal Battles

All Current Features

USAToday overviews several legal cases at stake regarding the civil rights of religious liberty and discrimination following the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision.  This popular press article can be used to update students on several pending cases and the broad contours of the arguments.

Wheaton Cancels Student Health Insurance Plan

All Current Features

Wheaton College will not offer a student health insurance plan (SHIP) due to the federal requirement under Obamacare that the plan offer “morally objectionable” products and services—abortifacient drugs and intrauterine devices (IUDs).  On July 8 a federal appeals court declined Wheaton’s petition for a preliminary injunction in connection with its civil suit to be free […]

The Social-Network Illusion

Network scientists have discovered how social networks can create the illusion that something is common when it is actually rare.  Statisticians have known about the paradoxical nature of social networks for some time such as the friendship paradox: on average your friends will have more friends than you do.  A related paradox called “the majority […]

 
 
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