religious freedom restoration act

As the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals gets ready to hand down a decision in Apache Stronghold v. United States , religious leaders—Sikh, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Mennonite—who have filed amicus…

Religious freedom has been at the center of American history since the founding. (And by the founding , I mean of the United States of America , not including the roughly century-and-a-half of…

In 1302, the island of Arwad, off the coast of Syria, fell to Mamluk forces. The Templar garrison died in the assault. The Templar had lost their last stronghold in the Holy Land, and while the other…

On Monday, the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s home in Florida, during which, according to the former president, federal officials even “broke into my safe.” While there are reports that the…

I was born (and mostly raised) in Indiana, so let me start off with some classic Midwestern understatement: I’m not thrilled with Indiana’s political trajectory. Okay, now that my Hoosier bona fides…

Sculpted, sweating, bare torsos doing push-ups, bulging muscles, two scantily-clad men locked in a fight—they, too, are ripped. A blond, equally fit man shoots at plastic bottles, a man’s hand grasps…

In the Fall of 2019, the secretive Christian Right state legislative campaign, Project Blitz, became even more of a secret. When RD first reported on Project Blitz in April 2018 the website featured…

Last week, The Satanic Temple (TST) introduced “the Satanic Abortion Ritual”—a ritual designed to provide religious support and comfort for women who’ve decided to get an abortion. But the ritual has…

If you’d asked me even two months ago what the next issue or event to spark acrimonious church-state conflict was likely to be, I doubt global pandemic would have even crossed my mind. And yet, in…

Either sincere religious conviction should be a defense, or it shouldn’t. There should be a healthy debate about religious exemptions in a pluralistic society, but not about the content of the religious conviction concerned.