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  • Who Hijacked My Religion?0

    The waters are stirring more than ever throughout American communities. They have been for quite a while. One afternoon way back in the mid-1980s I was startled to see curious brochures placed besidesweekly service bulletins on the welcoming table at my local church. As I flipped through the pamphlet, it was apparent to me that

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  • Changed Lives, a Changed World0

    The Christian Right is not a monolithic movement but one with diverse expressions and voices with no one single representation. Some years ago Paul Weyrich, one of the chief architects of the Christian Right, voiced his assessment of the “culture wars.” He feared that the war was lost and that Christians should establish their own

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  • Learning to Speak Well0

    On March 21, 2019, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that protects freedom of speech on college campuses. Perhaps no one understands the need for this executive order better than Matthew Vitale. A student at the University of California at Riverside, he was verbally and physically accosted by another student who was offended by

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  • Multiplying Divisions – The Federalist and Religious Factions0

    James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” gratifyingly concluded his role with an amendment-less Constitution in September 1787, then headed for New York to work on The Federalist Papers. Yet it was only the next summer when he would voice to his Virginian constituency a promise to propose a bill of rights at the First

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  • In Search of Excep­tion­alism0

    Pity poor Queen Elizabeth II of England. She tried to give presidential visitor Trump a little background history of the long relationship between the mother country and the still somewhat new republic birthed by the once British Empire. Towering over the longest-serving monarch in modern times, Trump kept some decorum, but showed little sign he

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  • Dialing De Minimis0

    The intersection of American capitalism and religious freedom can be a tricky place. It has been long said that “the business of America is business.” Not surprisingly, the United States has always been loath to pass any law that could be viewed as interfering with business. In fact, it was not until the Great Depression,

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