2012 February

Archive for February, 2012

Santorum’s Theocratic Backlash against Secularism

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

In his campaign for the U.S. presidency, ultra-conservative, right-wing Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum has stepped up his appeal to the public’s religious sentiments by attacking former president John F. Kennedy’s belief that state and church should remain separate. If Santorum wins, the implications are ominous. When we look at the origins of the concept of civil government in the United States, it begins to look as though the senator is trying to take the country even further back in time than first imagined.

If Santorum is really trying to take us back in time, we have to go back at least to 1960. That year, during his presidential campaign, Kennedy made his thoughts on church-state separation known in a speech before the Houston Ministerial Association. We might be gobsmacked to compare the views of the senator from Pennsylvania with those of the assassinated president:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President — should he be Catholic — how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him.

Kennedy, a Catholic, even went on to say that if issues such as birth control (he literally mentions birth control) came before him as president, he would make his decision in accordance with this and other separatist views. And he pronounced these words before a crowd of both Catholics and Protestants–before a crowd of ministers. Anybody who reads or listens to the entire speech will agree that the man’s rhetorical skills far surpass those of today’s presidents, and that his views reflect a far more openly liberal position than any president today would hold. What does Santorum think about Kennedy’s speech? According to Peter Foster and Jon Swaine of The Daily Telegraph, Santorum responded to the first line of the above quotation by saying “You bet that makes you throw up.”

Not exactly a comparison of oratorical skills in terms of either class or eloquence. On one hand we get polished, inspired public speaking which respects the intelligence of the listener, and on the other we get, “Ew, that kind of speech makes me barf!” Have we descended so low in our expectations that our presidential candidates must insult a widely cherished idea which lies at the foundation of modern civil government by evoking images of bile lining the inside of a toilet bowl?

As it turns out, Santorum’s crudely sophomoric and deceptive rhetoric takes the American psyche back even further than 1960. Kennedy’s words echo those of Thomas Jefferson himself, who expressed a similar suspicion of religious influence in government one hundred and fifty-eight years earlier in his 1802 reply to a letter from the Danbury Baptists, who expressed concern over being marginalized as a minority by the official Congregationalist Protestant church in Connecticut. In his letter, Jefferson sympathized with the Danbury Baptists:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their “legislature” should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

Just as it was for Kennedy, religion was a private and personal matter for Jefferson, who, during his tenure as ambassador to France, influenced Madison’s drafting of the Bill of Rights and, specifically, the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Santorum’s theocratic rightism is so retrogressive that the politicians of centuries past begin to look more modern and liberal than he. The truly unsettling thing, however, is that they would probably never win against him in a modern-day election, because past ideas regarding secularism are too liberal for the present day.

But Santorum would take the American public even further back in time than 1791, when the First Amendment came into effect, all the way to 1644. He would have to do so, because Jefferson borrowed his words from Roger Williams, a Baptist minister and the founder of Rhode Island, who also maintained that the separation of church and state was necessary to preserve the purity of both entities. Rev. Williams describes his views in his 1644 book The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience:

…the faithful labors of many witnesses of Jesus Christ, existing in the world, abundantly proving, that the Church of the Jews under the Old Testament in the type and the Church of the Christians under the New Testament in the anti-type, were both SEPARATE from the world;

and that when they have opened a gap in the HEDGE, or WALL OF SEPARATION, between the garden of the Church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broken down the WALL itself, removed the candlestick, and made his garden a wilderness, as at this day.

And that therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and paradise again, it must of necessity be WALLED in peculiarly unto Himself from the world, and that all that shall be saved out of the world are to be transplanted out of the wilderness of the world and added unto His Church or garden…a SEPARATION of Holy from unHoly, penitent from impenitent, Godly from unGodly. [sic]

Here Williams attempts to vindicate church-state separation by alluding to the metaphor in Isaiah 5:1-7. In Williams’s view, formal separation of the two is necessary to preserve the purity and prevent the corruption of both. The government of the world must not impose on the vineyard of religion, lest it should sour the grapes within, and religion must not impose on government lest it should violate the right to freedom of conscience granted by God [1], including that of non-Christians such as Jews, Muslims, pagans, and atheists [2]. It is impossible to imagine Santorum making such a strong case for church-state separation today in 2012.

Of course, right-wing revisionists have attempted to discredit Williams’s interpretation–but not necessarily with any success. In an article on the Web site The Moral Liberal, conservative writer and former evangelical pastor William J. Federer argues that Williams is alluding to “a Scriptural pattern that when God’s people sin, He judges them by allowing the church to be trampled by an ungodly government”. The message behind the Isaiah passage, Federer suggests, is that God will restore his garden by shutting it out from the world if his followers repent. It is unclear exactly what Federer means here, but if he is saying “religion should be allowed to influence government, because the Isaiah passage doesn’t actually bar it from doing so”, his logic is flawed: 1) God’s breaking down the wall is a punishment for sin in the passage, not the ideal state of things, hence it follows that walling off the garden from the world (i.e. separating church and state) is a benevolent gift from God in recognition of human penitence. 2) Federer’s argument is a genetic fallacy, which states that a conclusion is valid because of its origin rather than its current meaning or context (e.g. saying that engagement rings are sexist because they used to symbolize the ankle chains of enslaved wives, even though they don’t anymore). Even if the original Isaiah metaphor wasn’t intended to support Williams’s idea of church-state separation, it has adopted a new meaning and purpose, therefore it stands on its own merit, and for its own sake.

But you’ll never hear Santorum make such an argument. Comparing him with Kennedy, Jefferson, and even Williams, it begins to look as though the senator intends to transport America all the way back to the Middle Ages. With any luck, the public will become so fed-up with his red herrings, logical leaps, and puerile antics that they’ll say, “Enough. We refuse to let you co-opt our civil government to impose your religious ideology on us”. This is certainly the hope of the Universal Life Church Monastery. Like other nondenominational churches, the ULC Monastery has always believed in strict church-state separation and government neutrality in religious affairs, to prevent corruption on both sides of “the wall” and to protect all faith groups (including non-faith groups), for we are all children of the same universe.

Sources:

1. James P. Byrd, The challenges of Roger Williams: religious liberty, violent persecution, and the Bible (Mercer University Press, 2002)[1] (accessed on Google Book on July 20, 2009)

2. Roger Williams, Richard Groves, The bloudy tenent of persecution for cause of conscience: discussed in a conference between truth and peace : who, in all tender affection, present to the High Court of Parliament, (as the result of their discourse) these, (among other passages) of highest consideration (Mercer University Press, 2001), pg. 3 [2] (accessible on Google Books, July 28, 2009)0865547661, 9780865547667

Tags: Christianity, churches, freedom of religion, politics, Universal Life Church
Posted in Christianity, Churches, Politics, Religious Freedom, washington dc | No Comments »

Bronze-Age Sexism in the Modern-Day Church

Thursday, February 23rd, 2012

You’re sitting in the pew at church, listening to the pastor give a sermon on the proper relationship between wives and husbands. He (although he could be a she) quotes Ephesians 5:22-3, and immediately your ears prick up. Your pulse quickens and your skin becomes flush with indignation. Few verses in the Bible have ever rankled you so much as that one, except perhaps the various allowances for slavery sprinkled throughout the Bible, as well as injunctions to execute adulterers, homosexuals, and other “miscreants”. It is one reason you decided to become a minister in a nondenominational Internet church. But this kind of preaching isn’t taking place in some small nineteenth-century Victorian parish church–it’s happening now in the twenty-first century, and something needs to be done to stop it.

The model of “Christianity as masculinity” has developed into a sort of religious trend of late, as if to counteract rapid social changes in gender and sexual identity. The movement’s most high-profile figures include people like John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Al Mohler, Wayne Grudem, and, of course, James Dobson. In a recent blog entry, author Rachel Held Evans describes Piper’s belief that Christianity should have a “masculine feel”, while anthropology professor Jenell Paris, a contributor at Patheos, mentions Driscoll’s remarks that women should stay up late at night to prevent men from cheating, and that stay-at-home fathers are worse than unbelievers. By now the average ULC minister will probably be incensed. But it gets worse. Contributor Jasdye at the blog Left Cheek writes about Piper’s recommendation to women who are beaten by their husbands: do not leave immediately and seek help, but stay with your husband for the night and wait until the church opens later in the week to seek advice on how to act.

Pretty odious stuff. But it’s so gross and awful nowadays that even some men are finding themselves speaking up against the insidiously sugar-coated “Masculine Christianity” movement (if it can be called that). And so should they, because feminism is basically about advocating sex equality, and this is mens’ responsibility as much as women’s. In response to Piper’s claim that “God has given Christianity a masculine feel”, Jasdye writes,

I’m not sure what that means, “masculine feel.” I know that I’m a man, and that there is something good about that, as I–as a male–was made in God’s image. But women are also made in God’s image. So is my precious daughter. And they’re feminine, right? So does Christianity have a feminine feel as well?

This is exactly what men and women, including ministers ordained online, should be saying in response to statements like Piper’s. Christianity should not be defined as masculine, because men and women both have equal access to divine wisdom, and men do not make better leaders than women. But we should also avoid confusing male with masculine, and female with feminine, because some men are feminine, and some women are masculine. Rather, we should be stating that Christianity (or any religion for that matter) should have an equal influence of male and female. Comparing South African Apartheid with gender apartheid in the church, another man, Fred Clark of the Patheos blog Slacktivist, also denounces the benevolent pop-sexism of Christian churches:

The South African system of racial apartheid made that nation a pariah state. It was almost universally denounced as immoral, because it was immoral. And that’s just as true of the gender apartheid in the church. It is immoral. It is indefensible. It is a sin—a sin that has become entrenched in institutional structures.

Now some opponents of women in church leadership positions will argue that racism cannot be compared with sexism. Well, yes it can. Both are forms of discrimination on the basis of a personal characteristic that has no bearing on leadership ability. And just as one can argue that the Bible commands wives to submit to their husbands, one can also argue that God is blind to race and sex (Galatians 3:28). Of course, this creates a contradiction, so when push comes to shove, which doctrine should we accept? If we want to be fair, gender-blindness makes more sense. We don’t get ordained online to divide and discriminate. This is the approach taken by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, another man who has criticized Christianity for excluding women. Tutu announced at a gathering of the world’s political and financial élite in Davos, Switzerland that the world needs a revolution of women, and that women should have a more significant role in policy-making in the world’s power structures.

The pop-sexism trend is by no means limited to Abrahamic religions, however. Some forms of New Age and neopagan spirituality also preserve a hierarchical male-female binary rooted in sex stereotypes. In an attempt to be fair and equal, they teach that there is a male deity and a female deity (the god and the goddess), but the god is still associated with traditionally masculine traits such as reason, dominance, and discipline, while the goddess (who embodies the “divine feminine”) is associated with traditionally feminine traits such as intuition, submissiveness, and nurturance. By definition, the submissive goddess is subordinate to the dominant god. But that’s hardly fair and equal, so the divine feminine still doesn’t cut it.

In an attempt to justify all of these old-fashioned sex roles, proponents of “masculine Christianity” will inevitably play the biology card (yet conveniently disregard it when it supports the theory of evolution). God made males dominant and disciplinarian, and females, submissive and nurturing, they will say. But there are lots of problems with this assumption. A lot of the “scientific” data cited to justify this biologically determined sex inequality is methodologically flawed, over-interpreted, or simply non-existent, as psychologist Cordelia Fine reveals in her book Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. One of the observations she makes in the book is that women are not necessarily more nurturing or domestic than males, and that men are not necessarily more fit than women for positions of leadership, power, and prestige. But the pigheaded sexist doesn’t care about real evidence; he or she will simply shout louder the second time around in hopes of drowning out the facts.

Proponents of “masculine Christianity” are riding this wave of pop-psychological pseudoscience and exploiting it to their benefit. Science is convenient to the traditionalist when it reinforces his or her bias, but sorely inconvenient when it challenges that bias. So how should we confront this disturbing trend in popular, right-wing, evangelical Christianity? Jenell Paris suggests we take the steam out of it by ignoring it: by refusing to purchase products like books which promote it, be refusing to attack it in the media (on blogs, in newspaper op-eds, etc.), and even by refusing to “like” somebody else’s dislike of it on social network sites. For, as the Bible says, you should not throw pearls before swine. Paris does make an exception for cases in which a direct, practical difference can be made, however. Whatever we do, we shouldn’t be telling ourselves that the Evangelical Church in America is too “feminine” (whatever that’s supposed to be); we should be telling ourselves that it is too chauvinistic. We at the ULC Monastery hope that this will change, because we believe strongly in the equality of women and men in positions of leadership and authority in the church and in the ministry. For, after all, we are all children of the same universe.

Sources:

Patheos: “Memo to the Masses: Withhold Consent from Christian Sexism”

Patheos: Slacktivist: “Gender Apartheid in the Body of Christ”

Rachel Held Evans

The Raw Story

Tags: Catholicism, minister, ordained, progressive spirituality, Universal Life Church, women's rights
Posted in Catholicism, Christianity, Churches, Progressive spirituality, Women's Rights | No Comments »

ULC Minister’s Research Exposes Posthumous Romney Weddings

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney may be feeling a slight headache in the coming months as the presidential campaign gets into full swing. Universal Life Church minister Helen Radkey, who has spent the last several decades fighting posthumous baptisms by the Church of Latter-Day Saints, has unearthed documents indicating that some of Romney’s ancestors were married to multiple spouses in posthumous wedding ceremonies. Whatever your thoughts as a ULC minister on the teachings and practices of Mormonism, Radkey’s findings reveal a collection of mysterious traditions which, in some cases, deserve closer examination for the way in which they may shape the lives of people outside the church.

A seasoned researcher, Radkey started pursuing the topic of posthumous polygamous weddings just recently. She has already spent years investigating posthumous baptisms by the Mormon Church, especially those performed for victims of the Holocaust. It isn’t always clear what drives the ex-Mormon from Hobart, Tasmania to champion this cause, but perhaps it is because posthumous baptisms insult the memory of Holocaust victims by suggesting they still need saving. However, she began to shift her focus from baptisms to weddings when she came across information on Romney’s genealogy. Intrigued by what she found, she combed through private databases at the church’s own Family History Library and produced documents which suggest that a number of Romney’s ancestors have been posthumously wedded by the church to multiple spouses.

Reflecting on her discovery, Radkey began questioning Romney’s statements about polygamy. Like most modern-day, mainstream Mormons, he has openly denounced the practice as immoral and corrupt. In fact, the former senator has reportedly called it “bizarre” and “awful”, according to Jason Horowitz of The Washington Post. And church spokesman Michael Purdy maintains that the church does not officiate wedding ceremonies for the deceased, Horowitz reports. In her interview with Horowitz, Radkey challenged Romney and the church’s attempt to disavow any connection with the mores of their ancestors: “How dare [Romney] say that polygamy was horrible when it was what his ancestors believed”, she said, adding that “I believe you should honor your bloodline. I have convicts in my bloodline. I don’t reject them”. She also suggests that the church might be rejecting polygamy for the living while secretly sanctioning it for the dead. The implication is that the church has a double-standard for the living and the dead, and that Mormons like Romney should confess to the polygamous legacy of their church and stop trying to sweep it under the rug in an attempt to obfuscate outsiders. Her crusade is probably not without personal motivation, either: she was excommunicated from the church in 1979.

The practice of marrying dead people to multiple partners, and the attempt to dismiss or obscure its presence in Mormon history, are not the only things that get Radkey roiled up. As mentioned above, she has also paid close attention to the church’s posthumous baptisms. In fact, she has discovered that the church has posthumously baptized everybody from Joan of Arc, Anne Frank, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel’s parents to Charlie Chaplin, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, and even Barack Obama’s mother. But the church isn’t supposed to be doing this apparently. As Horowitz reports, it has made an agreement with Jewish groups to desist from posthumously baptizing deceased Jews, presumably because the activity suggests that innocent victims of genocide need to be saved, which, understandably, would insult members of the community. Responding to the reports of continued baptisms, Wiesel himself made a public appeal to Romney requesting him to ask his church to stop the baptisms. All in a day’s work for the online ordained minister. If the veracity of Radkey’s claims can be confirmed, the implications are scandalous, to say the least. It means that the church has not only contradicted its official stance by secretly marrying dead Mormons to multiple partners, but also violated an agreement with the Jewish community to stop baptizing Holocaust victims like Frank and Wiesel’s parents out of respect for their memory and the feelings of their community. And it can all be traced back to the LDS church’s own archives thanks to the assiduous research efforts of Radkey.

What should we take from Radkey’s discoveries and how should this shape our view of the LDS church? Understandably, the belief that the living can marry the dead to people chosen by the living, and to multiple partners, seems a bit farfetched to many, and the belief that the living can baptize the dead to save them from damnation seems a bit brazen and insolent to many, too. Even a lot of people who get ordained online and become a minister to marry their friends and relatives find this peculiar. If we think about it, though, a lot of religions have strange beliefs. Christians believe that God became a human being to be sacrificed, propitiate himself, and thereby save humans from eternal torment, rising miraculously from the dead after this goal was accomplished. Meanwhile, some Roman Catholics believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation, which states that consecrated bread and wine literally become the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, and some Jainists believe in a ritual called sallekhana, a form of self-starvation which is supposed to cleanse oneself of negativity and bad karma through complete non-violence and meditation. Religion in general is a quirky thing. So, while we should hold the Mormon church accountable for how it treats the memories of those it posthumously married and baptizes, we should also remember the very strange, funny, and questionable things other religions teach.

Tags: marriage, Mormon
Posted in faith, marriage | No Comments »

Hate is Hate: Reparation in America

Monday, February 20th, 2012

Three years ago, the Monastery addressed the important issue within the United States of personal heritage and the flag of the old Confederacy. In this month of February, we celebrated the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the champion of ending slavery and keeping our union together despite a bloody civil war, and we find it appropriate to reexamine this divisive issue.

In the past year, we have seen examples of groups fighting for the right to discriminate against others. Some religious organizations cried out that if they cannot deny women health services or keep gays from acquiring equal rights that their freedom of religion is being infringed upon. In a relevantly similar situation, we have seen many individuals, proud of their family heritage, fight to display the battle flag of the Confederate States of America (CSA) known as the “stars and bars.” In one case, Annie Caddell of South Carolina lamented that she wished her black neighbors would just understand that the Confederate flag on her front porch was not meant “to slam anybody.”

What makes these situations alike is an inability of some to view the world through the eyes of others, and give up their selfish outlooks. While it might be consolation that for some, flying the CSA flag is not meant as an insult, the greater harm lies in successfully insulting people, whether you mean to or not.

For many black Americans, the stars and bars represent a painful chapter in history. If it is fair for flag-bearers to ask that others view the display as a symbol of heritage, we can view the flag as commentary on American heritage in general, including that of people descended from slaves. After all, anyone can find personal resonance in being confronted with the flag, not just those whose ancestors fought with the rebels. Displaying it publicly can muster pride within an individual, but at regular and nearly unavoidable torment to several others, while not displaying it publicly causes no direct harm to either the individual or his neighbors. Flying the stars and bars then seems indefensible.

Several southern states have come to this realization within recent years. In November of 2011, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles voted to no longer allow license plates to bear the flag of the CSA. In another case, a black juror in Shreveport, Louisiana refused to hear a case in the Caddo Parish court house due to the fact it would be presented under the Confederate flag, not the U.S. flag. He argued that the court and citizens are held to U.S. law, so cases should be heard under the symbol of our nation, not one that represents a country no longer in existence.

Authorities agreed with his complaints and had the stars and bars removed, though a statue of rebel soldiers remains at the front and center of the building. Statues such as this are peppered throughout the southern states, and there are many Civil War relics treasured by groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy. These attempt to bring honor to the Confederate cause, but we don’t believe this is a worthy pursuit. Many will be quick to point out that the war was fought over more than just the issue of slavery, though this was a central part. They will chronicle a history of southern pride, and the northern paternalistic attempts to legislate against values and commerce practiced in the south. There was also a major disagreement about how to handle the creation of new states and under whose conception of the justice they would be designed. It seems the more general issue was that of states’ rights versus federal authority.

The reason this is not a worthy cause is the sheer hypocrisy of it. While southerners championed self-determination, they brutally stole it from their slaves. While they insisted northerners failed to empathize with their way of life, it didn’t occur to them to empathize with people they saw as nothing more than property. They exacted greater abuse on captured Africans than the federal government exacted against the southern states.

Abraham Lincoln declared that all freed slaves after the war would receive forty acres and mule to work the land in payment for the tyranny they endured. After the failure of John Wilkes Booth and the Confederates to capture Lincoln, the north won the war. Booth then assassinated the President five days later, and his successor, Andrew Johnson, revoked the edict. Descendants of slaves have nothing to show for the atrocities committed against their families, and at this point, there is insufficient land to make good on the old reparation. We propose that all Confederate artifacts, including statues, flags, and battle relics be handed over to descendants of slaves. While this certainly doesn’t erase the history, it would prevent ignorant people from evoking slavery and a bigoted perspective to those around them by proudly displaying these symbols of hate. We call on the great state of Mississippi to remove the stars and bars from their state flag. Even if you one does not purport to “slam anybody,” as Annie Caddell phrases it, hate is hate, and our ordained ministers, and indeed our nation will not stand for it.

Sources:

Eurweb

Confederate American Pride

KSLA12 Louisiana

History Channel Online

Tags: humanity, politics, racial inequality
Posted in Politics, Racial Inequality, humanity | No Comments »

Bishops, Obama, and Birth-Control

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

Catholic and evangelical Protestant church leaders are getting ready to fight U.S. president Barack Obama on birth control mandates for employers. Obama has announced adjustments to the mandate to exempt religious organizations, but critics have argued that this move doesn’t go far enough to protect religious freedom. The debate is certainly a delicate one, and it requires careful consideration of both religious freedom and women’s rights, but Obama’s critics might be taking their contention a little too far: religious groups already enjoy extensive protections, and kowtowing to religious interests while marginalizing others will lead to religious tyranny. But a single-payer plan might solve the dilemma.

Getting a grasp on this requires a brief look at the actions the Obama administration has taken in the past couple of weeks. The uproar began on January 20th when the administration revealed plans to require religiously affiliated nonprofit organizations to provide contraception for their employees. This would not include churches and houses of worship, but hospitals, colleges, and charities with ties to the church that employ both believers and non-believers alike. Religious groups decried the move, and in response Obama abandoned the mandate on February 10th. Religiously affiliated nonprofit organizations would no longer be required to provide the contraception, he announced, and instead this responsibility would fall on insurers themselves, ensuring that women still had access to free contraception. Religious groups said this was a change for the better, but that it still wasn’t good enough because it would still apparently impinge on religious freedom. In anticipation of this, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, evangelical leaders, and others have been preparing for a fight against a future birth control policy.

It’s not exactly certain such a policy would restrict constitutionally-protected religious freedoms, however, and family-planning advocates have been quick to point this out. People are still allowed to worship, proselytize, and provide social services in accordance with their faith–it is only when religious groups use taxpayer dollars to perform these works that religious liberty must be limited, according to Marci Hamilton, a constitutional scholar at Cardozo School of Law. And Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, argued in a press conference recently that bishops who oppose Obama’s birth control policies have “a distorted view of religious liberty–one that has no basis in law or the [United States] Constitution”. So Obama isn’t necessarily restricting the free exercise of religion, and his critics have mischaracterized his actions by conveying the impression that he is.

But even if we were to concede that Obama is somehow restricting religious freedom, how much freedom should religion have? Should it be completely and utterly limitless and unobstructed? Purely in terms of logic and fairness, this creates a huge problem, because it leads to tyranny of religion, not to mention begs the question of what happens when two religions take up different sides of the same issue. If religious freedom is limitless, Christians should be allowed to keep slaves, because the Bible permits this practice (Titus 2:9), and Muslim men should be allowed to beat their wives, because the Quran permits this practice (Surah 4.34). However, we do not permit such practices in civilized democracies, and this is completely non-controversial, so obviously religious freedom has limits, and those limits are where it impinges on the rights of another. By the same token, then, in certain situations we should be able to restrict the religious freedom to deny women contraception, since it impinges on women’s reproductive rights (which are human rights). Such a compromise is only fair. So, no, it isn’t necessarily wrong for a civil government to restrict the religious freedom to deny women contraception, as long as we carefully consider the context.

All of this quarrelling over religious freedom and women’s rights could be avoided, of course, if the U.S. federal government set up a special health-care plan for its citizens. Religious conservatives have complained that Obama’s decision to make insurers directly responsible for providing contraception doesn’t completely solve the problem, because some religious organizations are self-insured, meaning that the only way employees can get insurance is from the organization itself. A single-payer health-care plan advocated by politicians from Newt Gingrich to President Obama would help solve this problem by financing health-care through a government entity instead of a religious one, allowing employees access to birth-control without forcing religious groups to provide it against their wills. Optionally, the government could contract for health-care services from private organizations. Thus, even if it the government cannot force religiously affiliated organizations to provide employees free contraception, there is still a way out through government insurance financing.

Balancing religious freedom with reproductive rights is a tricky affair, but it can be managed. The “sky-is-falling” rhetoric directed by religious conservatives at Obama’s birth-control policies portrays a mildly paranoid, irrational resistance: religious institutions already enjoy almost unlimited freedoms thanks to the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and totally unlimited freedom is tyrannical and unfair anyway. It is not the case that either women’s rights or religious rights, but not both, can be accommodated in a future contraception mandate enacted by the Obama administration; both of them can. And one of the best ways to go about doing this is by developing something like a single-payer plan. That way everybody wins: women, religious organizations, and the politicians who are trying to find common ground on which the two can stand.

Sources:

The Associated Press

Reuters: Bishops plan aggressive expansion of birth-control battle

Tags: politics, religious freedom, sex, women's rights
Posted in Catholicism, Christianity, Politics, Religious Freedom, Women's Rights, humanity, sex | No Comments »

Washington State Legalizes Gay Marriage

Monday, February 13th, 2012

On Monday, 13 February, Washington State legalized gay marriage when Governor Christine Gregoire signed into law a marriage equality bill passed by the state Legislature. On the same day, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum was visiting the state to meet with gay marriage opponents, who plan to file a referendum and an initiative to overturn the law in next November’s election. If anything is certain, it is that Washington State will be a battleground for gay marriage in the coming months–but there is hope that equal rights will prevail.

The path to gay marriage in the Evergreen State has been an incremental one, gradually gaining momentum over the years. Senator Ed Murray, D-Seattle, has played an instrumental role in sponsoring gay rights in the Senate. With his help, the Legislature passed a domestic partnership law in 2007, and voters upheld an expanded, “everything-but-marriage” version of the law in 2009, the first time in American history that voters upheld a gay rights law. Plans to pass gay marriage legislation picked up the pace on 4 January, when Gregoire publicly endorsed the bills. The Senate, which has a higher percentage of Republicans than the House of Representatives, passed a Senate version of the bill in a 28-21 bipartisan vote 1 February, and the House passed its own version of the bill in a 55-43 bipartisan vote the following Wednesday. Gregoire’s signature followed.

Gay marriage opponents have vowed to defeat the legislation by putting the issue to the voters. Some have vowed to file a referendum to have the law repealed through a public vote in next November’s election using money from out-of-state lobbies like the National Organization for Marriage. Meanwhile, Everett, Wash. attorney Stephen Pidgeon filed an initiative last month to change the current state statute’s definition of marriage from a union between a male and a female to a union “between one man and one woman”. The referendum requires opponents to submit 120,577 signatures by 6 June to qualify for the November ballot, or gay weddings will commence 7 June. The initiative requires opponents to submit twice those many signatures–241,533–by 6 July to qualify for the November ballot. Rick Santorum is meeting with gay marriage foes in Olympia and Tacoma this week to help boost opponents’ efforts, but will be skipping Seattle, the state’s socially liberal, culturally influential stronghold.

Even with the threat of a referendum and an initiative looming in the distance, research suggests Washingtonians may uphold gay marriage if it appears on the ballot. A poll conducted by the University of Washington last October shows that 43% of Washingtonians support marriage equality, an increase of 13% from the same poll five years earlier. That might still sound like the death-knell for gay marriage, but the same poll showed that 55% of Washingtonians would vote to uphold marriage equality if it were actually put to a public vote. Polls like these reflect the rapidly growing acceptance of gay marriage in recent years, and a good chance that Washington voters will defeat the efforts of gay marriage opponents at the ballot box.

Washington’s legalization of same-sex marriage comes at a time when multiple states are dealing with the issue. The New Jersey, Maryland, and Illinois legislatures are mulling similar bills, and the people of Maine might be voting on the issue in November. In addition, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently rejected a voter-approved ban on gay marriage in California, and while the ruling applies only to that state, it may open doors for similar rulings elsewhere in the court’s jurisdiction, which includes Washington. On top of that, the Australian Parliament is mulling four bills on the issue. In response to mounting opposition, the ULC Monastery recently posted an article on its ULC.org blog debunking the common arguments against homosexuality and gay marriage. While the true battle may just be beginning, for now gay marriage remains legal in Washington state, as well as in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Iowa, Washington, D.C., and a handful of countries around the world. We at the ULC Monastery hope that voters uphold equality if it is put on the November ballot, and that the pace of change continues to quicken in favor of equality for all loving and committed couples across America and around the world.

Give us your thoughts. If gay marriage were put up to a public vote, how would you vote, and why? Do you think it’s right for a majority to vote on minority rights? Why or why not?

Sources:

News.co.au

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Voters may face 2 ballot measures on gay marriage

The Seattle Times: Rick Santorum to visit Olympia and Tacoma on Monday

Tags: Marriage equality, politics
Posted in LGBTQ rights, Politics, Progressive spirituality, Religious Freedom, marriage equality | No Comments »

Student Ministers on Why Online Ordination Matters

Friday, February 10th, 2012

With all of the media publicity surrounding online ordination, the benefits often get overshadowed by jokes about the easy, five-minute, one-click-away process. But getting ordained online is about more than just cutting corners; it’s also about breaking down ecclesiastical hierarchies. Students are among the first to realize this fact, and they will tell you there are several ways in which online ordination makes spirituality more accessible and egalitarian: it presents opportunities for the poor, it attracts open-minded individuals who believe in equality, and it respects the spiritual conscience of the individual.

The money issue is important to students, because, well, most students are pretty poor. Given the lingering economic downturn and rising tuition costs in the United States, penny-pinching students are realizing it’s easier to get ordained online for free than to flush $80,000 down the toilet in a traditional seminary. “It’s a funny concept that you can get ordained online,” student minister Joshua Horton tells Zirconia Alleyne of the Western Kentucky University Herald. “You don’t have to go through this big, expensive monastery to be ordained.” Horton, who got ordained online in the ULC Monastery, chose this path because, as he states in his own words, “I wanted to do something that was quick and free so I could still concentrate on school”. These students aren’t getting ordained online because they’re lazy and refuse to do the hard work; they’re doing it because it opens doors for both them and their poor peers and gives them the chance to make their spiritual voices heard regardless of income level. They’re doing it because wealth shouldn’t be a signifier of spiritual wisdom. That is one reason why online ordination is an attractive route for young students.

In addition to the fact that it gives a voice to aspiring ministers regardless of money issues, ordination online tends to draw on the talents and wisdom of people who believe strongly in equality. Horton himself has expressed the sentiment of many modern young people that every loving, committed couple deserves the chance to have their union recognized: “I would marry heterosexuals or homosexuals if they love each other”, he tells Alleyne. Why do people like Horton tend to be so fair and generous? One possible explanation for the openness of ministers ordained online is the fact that nondenominational online churches like ULC Monastery welcome people of every sex, race, nationality, sexual orientation, and religion, so long as they respect the law and the rights of others. Fair and open-minded people may be drawn to churches with fair and open-minded ordination policies, where members form an egalitarian circle rather than a hierarchical pyramid. This kind of relationship appeals to young ministers with a modern mindset.

Such egalitarian church policies enable greater spiritual freedom and respect for individual conscience. While conventional churches impose rigid, restrictive doctrines to control their flocks, reserving leadership roles for those who earn the approval of their fellow seminarians, interfaith online churches prefer more flexible laws which recognize the inborn wisdom of each individual. Horton doesn’t believe that God intended for ordination to be complicated, or to be restricted to ministers who had to jump through hoops to earn their ordination credential: “There’s a spiritual ordination put on by God”, he tells Alleyne, adding that “[i]t’s not the world’s decision who’s ordained”, “I won’t agree with those ministers who say I’m too young and not ordained”, and “Jesus was a carpenter, and he achieved great things”. Young, independent-minded students like Horton believe that every person has direct access to divine wisdom, and this belief is shared by members of nondenominational Internet churches like the ULC Monastery. No one has the right to say that another cannot access this knowledge unless they go through the church or consult a canonical sacred text approved of at some ancient synod by a bunch of dead white men. It is this kind of respect for individual spirituality and personal spiritual conscience that is so important to young people like Horton.

So while the media continue to poke fun at the novelty of online ordination, the rest of us will sit back and reflect on why it matters so much in our rapidly changing contemporary society, thanks largely to the savvy of forward-thinking students who decide to become a minister online because they see the potential in the online ministry platform. These reasons are many, but the most basic include the fact that free online ordination helps to blur the boundaries between rich and poor, creates the opportunity for young people to promote equality, and recognizes that ordination is a compact made between the individual and God (or gods), and not between the individual and an ecclesiastical hierarchy. It is these values which ULC wedding officiants embody each time they perform a wedding ceremony, baptism, or funeral. They realize that it isn’t just a big joke, but that it offers a serious opportunity for individuals to change the way in which “religion is done”.

Source:

Western Kentucky University Herald

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Tags: be a minister, be a priest, become a minister, College Heights Herald, Get Ordained, get ordained online, get ordained online free, kentucky, nondenominational church, nondenominational online church, online church, online ordination, student ministers, ULC, Universal Life Church, Western Kentucky University
Posted in Progressive spirituality, Religious Freedom, Spirituality | No Comments »

Komen, Planned Parenthood, and Women’s Health

Monday, February 6th, 2012

In a surprising about-face, the breast-cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure reversed its decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. The reverse-decision came after a national outcry on the part of lawmakers and women’s health advocates. Although prospects look good once again for women seeking breast cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood, questions remain: What drove Komen’s decision to cut funding in the first place? The facts suggest that indeed there was a political motivation.

The furor began in late January when Komen announced the decision to cut funds for Planned Parenthood breast cancer screenings, a vital form of preventive health-care for poor women. Immediately after, women’s health advocates flooded social media Web sites like Facebook and Twitter with scathing accusations that right-wing, anti-abortion politicians had pressured Komen into making its decision. Nancy G. Brinker, the head of the foundation, defended Komen’s decision, arguing that abortion wasn’t the reason why funding to Planned Parenthood was being cut off, and that the foundation was still committed to saving women’s lives. Opponents of the decision weren’t satisfied with this reason, however, and under mounting pressure Komen announced plans to reinstate funding for Planned Parenthood breast-exams a few days later, stating that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive.

Despite the reversal, we might still wonder what made Komen change its mind in the first place. Although funding seems assured for now, Brinker and others went to great lengths to defend the initial policy change, citing several reasons. One reason for the change is that Planned Parenthood is currently under investigation to find if it has used federal funds to finance abortion services, which is illegal under the Hyde Amendment (an anti-abortion amendment attached to appropriations bills which bars federal funding of abortion except for cases in which the mother is the victim of rape or incest, or in which the mother’s life is in danger). Another reason, reports Shari Roan of the Los Angeles Times, is that Planned Parenthood breast-screenings are a pass-through service, meaning patients still need to be referred elsewhere for mammograms, biopsies, and cancer treatment, and Komen favors funding more direct treatment.

But critics of Komen’s initial de-funding argue that the decision was at root politically motivated. Karen Handel, senior vice-president of public policy at Komen, may have played a role in the plan to cut funding. Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic reports that “three sources with direct knowledge of the Komen decision-making process told me that the rule was adopted in order to create an excuse to cut off Planned Parenthood” and that “[t]he decision to create a rule that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood, according to these sources, was driven by the organization’s new senior vice-president for public policy, Karen Handel”. Goldberg points out that Handel, a Republican, is “a former gubernatorial candidate from Georgia who is staunchly anti-abortion and who has said that since she is ‘pro-life, [she does] not support the mission of Planned Parenthood’”. During her 2010 gubernatorial campaign, she was endorsed by the likes of Sarah Palin, Arizona governor Jan Brewer, and Mitt Romney, further revealing her conservative milieu. Given Handel’s decidedly anti-abortion stance, as well as her conservative Republican supporters, it seems reasonable to suspect that Komen’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood was, in fact, driven by conservative, right-wing politics.

In addition to the political undertones, critics point out the vital role Planned Parenthood plays in women’s health services. According to Roan, Brinker has argued that Planned Parenthood breast screenings wouldn’t be the best use of Komen funds even if investigations show that the organization hasn’t been using federal money to finance abortions. The reason she gives is that Planned Parenthood only offers clinical breast exams and must refer patients elsewhere for mammograms, biopsies, and cancer treatment. Komen, she states, wants to avoid such “pass-through” services and focus on funding direct treatment. But, as Shawn Rhea tells Roan, Planned Parenthood doctors still manage patients referred out for these other services, and they offer many of the same services as private obstetrician-gynecologists do. And, as Susan Love tells her, Planned Parenthood breast exams and mammogram referrals are an extremely important service for poor women or women who don’t have health care. Defunding these services just because they offer preliminary treatment would be a mistake, then.

If that isn’t enough to make you suspicious about the Komen Foundation’s leaders, consider what a recent article in BBC News Magazine said about Brinker’s political views. In the article, Samantha King, a professor at Queen University in Ontario, quotes Brinker as having said, “We don’t think this is political, I don’t consider myself an activist, and I’m especially not a feminist. Breast cancer affects everyone”. So now Brinker isn’t a feminist, because that’s apparently a bad thing for the leader of a charity dedicated to fighting breast cancer to be. But a feminist is simply a person who advocates social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men. (This includes health care.) So, would we really want a person who doesn’t believe in the equality of men and women to be leading an organization intended to defend and protect women’s health services? Probably not.

It’s great that the Komen Foundation will be re-instating Planned Parenthood’s grant status, but we should still be wary of its position on funding women’s health organizations which offer abortion services. The foundation justified defunding Planned Parenthood because it is currently under investigation for financing abortions using federal money (even though this hasn’t been proven), and because it believes funding direct treatment is a better use of money. But we have good reason to believe that the funding cut was motivated by the anti-abortion ideology of Komen policy-makers like Handel, and that the breast and obstetrical-gynecological exams offered by organizations like Planned Parenthood are crucial preventive health services for poor women and women who don’t have health care–many of these women might be unable to obtain services from the organizations which Komen prefers to fund. Insofar as we can so that Planned Parenthood’s abortion services did motivate Komen’s initial policy change, women should never be denied life-saving health services simply because the organization they obtain these from also provides abortions. Hopefully the board of Komen will come to realize this and make it a priority to serve women, not political ideologies.

Sources:

The Atlantic

BBC News Magazine

Los Angeles Times: Komen reverses decision to cut Planned Parenthood funding

Los Angeles Times: Susan G. Komen for the Cure founder defends Planned Parenthood decision

Seattle Times

Tags: abortion, politics, women's rights
Posted in Abortion, Politics, Women's Rights | No Comments »

Why Florida’s School Prayer Bill is a Bad Idea

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

On the same day as the Washington state senate votes on a bill to legalize gay marriage, the Florida senate was preparing to vote on a bill that would legalize prayer in public school classrooms, further illustrating the widening rift between the religious right and the secular left in the United States. Ideally no such rift would exist in the first place, but the argument supporting public school prayer has several problems which deserve to be addressed: it is unrealistic to think that all religions will be accommodated, public school prayer could create unnecessary tensions and divisions in the classroom, and there is a perfectly legitimate alternative.

On the surface, the bill would seem to skirt any potential violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by ensuring that all religions are represented fairly and neutrally, as in a comparative religion class. Only students would be allowed to give the prayers, which would be required to include a message of inspiration. The definition of what is inspirational would be determined by the state, and school districts would not have the authority to change this definition. Additionally, in order to prevent public officials from endorsing a biased view of religion, public school employees would be barred from vetting or in any other way revising or changing the students’ prayers. Ostensibly, under the proposed law, any religious message could and would be accommodated.

It isn’t certain that this is the case, though, and there are some serious logistical problems with any attempt to accommodate religious prayers and messages in public schools. To be fair, the religions of all students must be accommodated, without a single exception. But how do we accomplish this? With some sort of special list or roster? Only so many students can be accommodated, and most students are Christian, so by the time a non-Christian student has the chance to get their name on the school’s special “prayer list”, it might be too late because every space is filled in with the name of a Christian student. Florida schools might have to start turning away non-Christians if and when Christians gain the upper-hand. Also, it’s hard to believe the average Florida school administrator would accommodate a Satanist or voodoo practitioner, so all religions probably wouldn’t be represented. The consequence is that the vast majority of prayers would represent a Judeo-Christian perspective, while some would most likely be flatly rejected or, at the very least, discouraged. And that isn’t exactly fair. So even if the stated intent is to represent a fair and neutral perspective on religion, it won’t necessarily turn out that way.

Besides, even if we were able somehow to bring together all religious viewpoints in the public school classroom, there is no guarantee that these viewpoints will meld together harmoniously and peacefully in an environment of mutual respect. People are passionate about their religious beliefs because, by habit, religion tends to be less concerned with calm philosophical reasoning. This is perhaps even truer for the male-dominated Abrahamic religions, which have been the source of much violence and terrorism in the world. Imagine if a Christian student said a prayer, and a fundamentalist Muslim student was offended by the Christian’s message, or, equally, if a Muslim said a prayer and a fundamentalist Christian decided he deserved to be harassed or beaten on the playground to punish his spiritual infidelity. Given their minority status, Muslim, pagan, atheist, and other students will be especially vulnerable to harassment and bullying in school if stormy, emotional debates about religion are opened up in public schools. This is particularly worrying due to the fact that schools are supposed to be places where students have access to education in a safe, peaceful environment. Creating opportunities for religious tension and, potentially, bullying, doesn’t seem like a good idea, then, especially given the growing cultural diversity of the United States.

The problems with Florida’s school prayer bill do not end with the difficulties of trying to accommodate every religion, or the tensions created by opening up the classroom to religious instruction; they include the assumption that all good moral and inspirational messages are necessarily rooted in religious instruction. One supporter of the Florida bill, Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, suggested that opponents of the bill didn’t want children to be inspired at all, as CBS Miami reports: Storms expressed her bewilderment over the mounting opposition to the bill, asking, “[d]o you suppose that opponents want, instead of to inspire little first graders, maybe they want to demoralize them?” But this is a fallacy. What Storms does here is create a false dichotomy, which states that only one of two options are possible when in fact there is a third (and, probably, many more), perfectly good option. Storms assumes that only religious inspirational messages or demoralizing messages are possible when in fact secular inspirational messages are possible, too. Nobody is arguing that children shouldn’t be inspired, but the inspiration of our nation’s children needn’t be rooted in religion; it is this secular inspirational message which is appropriate for public school situations. It almost seems as though Storms knows this but deliberately creates the impression that it isn’t the case. So, no, the people of Florida – as well as the rest of America – doesn’t have to settle with a bill that permits religious prayer in public schools.

All of this public school prayer legislation is a bit tiring, especially in a country which is supposed to be a secular democracy, but separation of state and church is a principle worth fighting for. Florida’s proposed school prayer measure is simply a bad idea: it’s unlikely that all religious viewpoints will be accommodated, it opens the door to religious tension and conflict, and secular messages offer a perfectly legitimate and neutral alternative for inspiring and electrifying students in a spirit of solidarity and harmony. When we reflect on these observations, legislation like the Florida bill begins to look more like an incrementalist attempt to insinuate religion into public policy, an ominous prospect indeed. This is something the Universal Life Church Monastery treats with extreme caution, because it is a fine line between letting students express their religious beliefs, and endorsing those beliefs through preferential treatment.

Source:
CBS Miami

Tags: be a minister, be a priest, be a rabbi, become a minister, Christianity, Florida, freedom of religion, Get Ordained, get ordained online, online ministries, online ministry, prayer, prayer in school, public schools, religion in school, separation of church and state, ULC
Posted in Christianity, Politics, Secular alternatives, faith | No Comments »

Creationism for Indiana Schools?

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Are Indiana public schools going to start teaching religion? It looks like a realistic possibility. As the Democrat-controlled Washington state Legislature advances a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, a Republican-controlled Indiana Senate committee has approved a bill that would allow creationism to be taught in Indiana public schools, further showing the stark religious and ideological divisions within the United States. But, as many ULC wedding officiants, priests, and ministers will agree, creationism doesn’t belong in public school science classrooms, and there are several reasons why: creationism isn’t science, it teaches the story of only one religious tradition, and it is best suited to the field of comparative religion.

With regard to the first of these, creationism shouldn’t be taught in public school science classrooms because, well, it simply isn’t science. Naturally, the senators backing the bill, Senate Bill 89, will contest this. According to Dan Carden of NWI.com, “[s]tate Sen. Scott Schneider, R-Indianapolis, who voted for the measure, said if there are many theories about life’s origins, students should be taught all of them”. This, of course, assumes that the theory is scientific to begin with, and should therefore be compared with other scientific theories. But it isn’t scientific, says John Staver, professor of chemistry and science education at Purdue University: “Creation is not science”, Carden reports him as saying. “It is unquestionably a statement of a specific religion.” Staver is right: creationism is the doctrine of the legally ordained minister, not the research scientist. Evolution is a scientific theory, which means it follows the principles of the scientific method, while creationism is not. The science classroom is supposed to teach students to compare scientific theories with other scientific theories, not to compare scientific theories with religious theories. Therefore, the public science classroom should not be teaching students to compare evolution with creationism.

Besides, even if we do teach creationism in public school science classrooms, whose creation story should we teach? The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America bars Congress from passing any law respecting an establishment of religion, and decades of judicial opinion have interpreted this to apply to individual state legislatures as well, the reason being that conflict arising from religious preference can occur at either the state or federal level. Besides, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution requires states to provide every citizen the equal protection of the law, so it is unfair as well as unconstitutional to ask students to study the Christian creation story, but not the creation stories of Hinduism, Buddhism, Native American religions, paganism, indigenous religions, or any other world religion. This is why people choose to become a minister, not a public school teacher. We might resolve this dilemma by teaching all religious creation stories in public schools, but this is logistically impractical, if not impossible, so it is simply more realistic to bar the teaching of any religious creation story in public schools. Passing a bill to teach creationism in Indiana would be unfair and unconstitutional, then, because it would violate both the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

This last point begs the question, how, then, does religion fit into public school curricula? After all, we might argue, it is impossible to avoid any mention of religion, because it is such an intimate and influential part of the human experience. To understand ourselves better as human beings, then, we must address issues of religion in some form or another. It is true that a discussion on human nature requires mention of religion, but it is not true that it requires the subjective endorsement of religion, as many people who get ordained online in a nondenominational church will already agree. For example, a history lesson on the profound social transformation taking place in Europe in the sixteenth century would be incomplete without mentioning the role of religion, but this does not require the teacher, school district, or government to endorse religion. And while it is unrealistic to teach all religious creation stories in a science classroom, we might still be able to find a place to do so in a comparative religion classroom–the only caveat is that no religion must ever be endorsed over another religion, and religion must never be endorsed over non-religion. So, even if Indiana does find a way to weasel Christian creationism into public school social science classes, it cannot be subjectively endorsed.

To sum up, creationism cannot be taught in public school science classrooms in Indiana or anywhere else in the United States, because it isn’t science to begin with, it is unfair to teach one creation story and not another (and unrealistic to teach all of them), and it belongs in comparative religion classes, where all religions are treated equally and objectively. As many of our own ULC ministers and pastors already know, the Universal Life Church Monastery has always held the position that religion should never have any legal or official influence in any tier of government in the United States, in order to prevent religious conflict and to show respect for the unimpeded advancement of science in its own right. Perhaps you agree, but perhaps you don’t. We are always open to hearing your thoughts on these issues, so feel free to make them known on the ULC Monastery Facebook discussion page or our social network for ministers.

Sources:

National Center for Science Education

NWITimes.com

WSBT.com