Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Religious Liberty

February 24, 2015

Why is NYC Discriminating Against Churches?

New York City owns almost 1,200 public school buildings that sit empty on nights and weekends. To earn some extra income, the city rents out the empty schools to tens of thousands of community groups for any meetings that might be of interest to the community: Boy Scouts, drama clubs, labor unions senior citizen groups, etc. Continue Reading...
February 24, 2015

Hostility Towards Religion Continues To Grow In America

Liberty Institute, a legal organization in Plano, Texas, has released the report, “Undeniable: The Survey of Hostility to Religion in America, 2014 Edition,” featuring more than 1,300 cases of religious hostility, persecution and/or Constitutional violations of rights in the United States. Continue Reading...
February 23, 2015

Florist Chooses Conscience Over Settlement

Last year Washington State’s Attorney General sued Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts on the basis of consumer protection. Florist Barronelle Stutzman had refused to sell flowers to a long time customer when the arrangements were to be used for a same-sex marriage ceremony. Continue Reading...
February 05, 2015

Federal Court Rules Religious Organizations Can Hire (and Fire) for Religious Reasons

Earlier today a federal appeals court handed down an important ruling that protects the liberties of religious organizations. In the case of Alyce Conlon v. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected a plaintiff’s attempt to enforce state and federal gender discrimination laws on one of the nation’s largest Christian campus ministries. Continue Reading...
January 26, 2015

The Complexities of Sexuality, Religion, and Cake

Last Friday at Religion Dispatches, Kara Loewentheil explored the recent story of a Denver bakery that is being “sued for refusing to bake a homophobic cake.” She calls into question the legitimacy of the request: It’s a snappy inversion of the now-classic example of bakers who refuse to provide wedding cakes for gay marriage or commitment ceremonies (or florists who refuse to provide flowers, photographers who refuse to photograph the ceremony, etc.). Continue Reading...
January 20, 2015

Supreme Court Defends Freedom in Landmark Religious Liberty Case

Can prison bureaucrats arbitrarily ban peaceful religious practices? Whether they should, they certainly have done so. As The Becket Fund points out, many prisons have barred Jewish inmates from wearing yarmulkes, denied Catholics access to the sacraments of communion and confession, and shut down Evangelical Bible studies. Continue Reading...