Category: Daily

Religion & Media Current Events

Birth Control! For Everybody!

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Ashley Baxstrom: Ladies, let’s celebrate! Check out this breaking blog post from Think Progress: Obama administration approves rule that guarantees near-universal contraceptive coverage, by guest blogger Jessica Arons, Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at American Progress. She writes:

Today, in a huge victory for women’s health, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that most employers will be required to cover contraception in their health plans, along with other preventive services, with no cost-sharing such as co-pays or deductibles.

Twenty-eight states already require employers to provide some coverage; but now, full coverage will be required in all.

Wowza! You know what that means – yup, Viagra no longer corners the coverage market. (Cuz, you know, Viagra has been fully covered for years. Good for men. Sucked for women who thought they should have equal rights or fair treatment or whatever.)

Besides that, it means that even most religiously-affiliated organizations have to comply. Obama decided to “maintain the narrow religious exemption that it initially proposed. Only houses of worship and other religious nonprofits that primarily employ and serve people of the same faith will be exempt.” Continue Reading →

Jews Writing Jews, January 24

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January, 24, 2012 | 6:00 – 7:30pm, 20 Cooper Square

Henry Goldschmidt (Race and Religion Among the Chosen Peoples of Crown Heights), Theodore Ross (Am I a Jew? forthcoming; editor, Men’s Journal), and Matthew Shaer (Among Righteous Men; contributor, New York Magazine)

Moderated by Alana Newhouse (editor, Tablet Magazine)

Three writers discuss the challenges of reporting and writing about Jewish communities other than their own. Continue Reading →

The End of Our Affair with Gossip Girl?

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Jo Piazza: After five seasons of defying everything good and holy, capitalizing on debaucherous underage sex and drug abuse, using a ménage a trois in a national ad campaign and generally creating some of the more deviant characters on primetime television, Gossip Girl has found god—the Catholic version no less.

And they have done it by appropriating the handy narrative created by Graham Greene in the last of his four overtly Catholic novels The End of the Affair.

Continue Reading →

Outside the Law: Cheryl Perich and the First Amendment

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There’s nothing quite like a First Amendment dispute to illuminate the subtleties of interpreting separation of church and state.

By Elissa Lerner

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time to uphold a forty year-old practice known as the “ministerial exception” in the case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School vs. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In Hosanna-Tabor, Cheryl Perich, a teacher who mostly taught secular subjects but also religion and occasionally led prayers, was fired after taking a leave of absence to receive treatment for narcolepsy. She threatened to sue the school for violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). A federal appeals court concluded that since her primary duties were secular in nature, she was therefore not a minister and could sue under ADA. However, the Supreme Court, in its first ministerial exception case, unanimously decided to overturn the decision, ruling that the question of who is a minister could not be “resolved by a stopwatch.” For the government to interfere with a church’s firing process “intrudes upon more than a mere employment decision,” wrote Chief Justice Roberts. “Such action interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church control over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs.” Continue Reading →

No time for games

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Thanks to our friendly fellow blogger The Sensuous Curmudgeon for drawing our attention this story: a story about the quest for truth. A story about history and modernity. A story about one of the greatest stories ever told – with a children’s board game. And a story about the people who hate that game.
In a Jan. 9 article entitled “Noah’s Ark Game Misses the Boat,” Institute for Creation Research (ICR) Science Writer – I’m sorry, “science writer” – Brian Thomas, M.S. (don’t miss the M.S.) blasts toy maker Ideal for their new Noah’s Ark Game (on sale at Wal-Mart!) for contributing to what is apparently a dearth of stories, toys and other representations which “parody” and create a “misleading impression” about the biblical Ark. Continue Reading →

It’s in the Mail!

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Dear Readers, If you want to receive a print copy of the Spring 2012 Events Calendar for The Center for Religion and Media at New York University (our publisher!) just ask!  Post a comment to this post, include your name and complete address, and wait for the mail man.  Happy spring!  Ann

P.S. You can also keep your eye on our site:  www.crmnyu.org Continue Reading →

Ralph Reed on Iowa

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From the CNN article, “My Take: Iowa Caucus Results Puncture Myth of ‘Evangelical Vote'” by Ralph Reed, founder and chairmen of the Faith and Freedom Coalition:

Here’s how the evangelical vote broke down: 32% for Santorum, 18% for Ron Paul, 13% each for Romney, Gingrich and Rick Perry, 6% for Michele Bachmann and 1% for Jon Huntsman.

This suggests a more nuanced and complex portrait of voters of faith. They are often crudely portrayed as voting based solely on identity politics, born suckers for quotes from Scripture or “code words” laced in the speeches of candidates appealing to their spiritual beliefs.

Evangelical voters, it turns out, are a more sophisticated bunch, judging candidates on a broad continuum of considerations from their personal faith and character to leadership attributes and electability.

Continue Reading →

Our Daily Links: While You Were Eating Fruitcake Edition

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Worth the Wait: It may have taken 1,500 years but the Talmud finally has an index.
Early Adopters: I’ve long said that religion and porn are the two first groups to adopt new technologies. In “Christianity and the Future of the Book” at The New Atlantis Alan Jacobs writes, “Religious communities have been the inventors, the popularizers, or the preservers of technologies.” (Jacobs doesn’t say anything about porn, alas.)
The Vatican has released its annual report on deaths of mission workers around the world. South America and Africa are highest on the list of dangerous continents.
Red Kettle Menace: The Salvation Army does great work but tis the season to hear more about their prayer-for-assistance policies, in this instance, regarding same-sex couples. (TR friend and co-conspirator Diane Winston has written about the Salvation Army in Red Hot and Righteous: the Urban Religion of the Salvation Army. Hear her talk about it here, in a 2009 interview with NPR.) Continue Reading →