On Tuesday a new law took effect making Utah the first state to enact a 72-hour waiting period before a woman can abort a baby. The bill, HB 461, sponsored by Republican Representative Steve Eliason of Sandy, increased the requisite waiting period by 48 hours, up from the previous mandate of 24 hours. Eliason introduced…
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The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian…
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It’s no wonder that Mitt Romney won plaudits from evangelical bigwigs for his commencement speech at Liberty University on Saturday. It showed he’s learned how to talk to them–or at least, learned to listen to the people who know how he’s supposed to talk to them. When he was running for president last time, Romney…
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In the past week, I’ve been called a bigot, a hater, had people wish I died, and had people wish Christians had died, been rounded up and killed, or experienced their own personal holocaust. All this came from proponents of gay marriage. The media won’t cover most of this. The media sees most stories as…
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Is displaying the Ten Commandments alongside copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Star-Spangled Banner, Magna Carta and other documents at a Virginia public high school an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion? Or is it part of an educational exhibit of historic documents? Those questions are at the heart of a long-simmering legal fight in…
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Long a lightning rod for conservative criticism, the Girl Scouts of the USA are now facing their highest-level challenge yet: An official inquiry by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. At issue are concerns about program materials that some Catholics find offensive, as well as assertions that the Scouts associate with other groups espousing stances…
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In back-to-back victories in the culture war on traditional marriage, Colorado’s civil union bill died in the Colorado House on Tuesday and North Carolina voters decided to uphold the biblical one woman-one man marriage definition. By a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent, North Carolinians voted to become the 31st state to pass a…
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Maurice Sendak, who just died, doesn’t seem, at first glance, to have much to teach Christians. After all, he was an atheist with a cynical outlook and a foul mouth. But underneath all of that, I think, Sendak saw something of the fallen glory of the universe we followers of Jesus sometimes ignore. Sendak’s most…
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One of the biggest growth areas in political activism around religion is coming from an unlikely source: the nonreligious. And it’s happening far from the marbled corridors of power in the nation’s capital. The Secular Coalition for America, an umbrella organization that represents 11 nontheistic groups including American Atheists and the American Humanist Association, is…
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The Rev. Jerry Falwell’s name will always be linked with the Moral Majority, the organization he formed to galvanize conservative evangelicals into political action. Certainly, bringing evangelicals out of the cultural wilderness and marching them into politics changed both the political and the religious landscape in important and enduring ways. One needs only to look…
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