When Shrugging is Not an Option
- May/June 2025
- April 30, 2025
Baseball and advertising are two of America's most popular activities, so when California businessman Edward Di Loreto–a strong financial supporter of local schools and colleges for decades–was solicited to buy advertising space along the outfield fence of the Downey High School baseball field, he didn't hesitate to write a check. But when the 83-year-old philanthropist
READ MOREIn the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's invalidation of RFRA, Congress is considering legislation (The Religious Liberty Protection Act) that would once again enable religious believers and institutions to challenge, in court, government interference with religious practice. Under this bill, believers could obtain exemptions, or accommodations, if the government lacks a sufficiently strong justification
READ MOREThe Sound and the Fury I was amazed to read in Liberty (March/April 1998, p. 16) that Judge Moore is "promoting religion" by permitting the display of the Ten Commandments and prayer in his courtroom. If this logic follows, then every vestige of our Christian historical nature is in violation of the First Amendment, which
READ MOREWhatever its faults (the unreasonable trust in reason, the tendency toward a hypernaturalism, the unwarranted optimism in human progress, the "demythologization" of religion), the Enlight- enment worldview at least included the possibility of knowledge and of truth. The real was deemed rational and, hence, knowable by rational minds. Not only does reality exist, but we
READ MOREOne afternoon in the late 1950s, while helping my mother tidy up our rural Baptist church in the Missouri Ozarks, I came across a packet of tracts on separation of church and state published by an organization called Americans United for Separation for Church and State. I was very young, and I asked my mother
READ MOREWe wondered what took so long for Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things, to respond to the shellacking he has been receiving in Liberty. Though nothing personal was meant, he and/or his magazine have been mentioned (excoriated?) at least a dozen times in the past few years. What piqued Father Neuhaus enough, however, to
READ MOREReverend Richard Steele is not a troublemaker. As the pastor of a church with more than 1,000 members and a budget of $650,000, he hardly has time for controversy. His days are spent comforting troubled souls and preparing next Sunday's sermon. But he's no pushover, either. When, in an effort to recoup its losses, the
READ MOREThe Holy Mother stands silently, frozen in time, gazing softly at the Infant on her right hip. Her left hand gently gathers the soft folds of her flowing robe. She wears a crown. It is not gaudy or bejeweled. It is regal, yet understated. The Baby holds a small cluster of tiny, perfectly carved grapes
READ MOREThough some people's meals might be bad, imagine facing criminal charges because of your cooking. That's exactly what happened to George Barghout. Mr. Barghout, formerly the owner and operator of a yogurt shop located in Baltimore, sold both kosher and nonkosher foods. On November 15, 1990, he was fined $400 plus $100 in court cost's
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