I got e-mail this week from Senator John Cornyn. He sends out a newsletter called “The Lonestar Weekly.” The lead story this time was about the contraceptive mandate that’s been causing the big firestorm in the media. Pundits everywhere seem to be arguing one side or the other: should faith-based employers be required to provide health insurance plans that cover birth control?
Cornyn, predictably, says no. Not that he, personally, has anything against birth control. Well, he doesn’t exactly say that, but he makes a point of saying contraception isn’t the point:
“The dispute over the mandate is not a dispute over the use of contraception. It is a dispute over First Amendment rights.”
He devotes several paragraphs to this argument, using phrases like “a blow to one of our most cherished liberties” and “the bedrock principles upon which our great country was established.” His headline vows, “If President Obama doesn't end contraception rule, Congress will.”
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Warring Holiday Billboards
War On Christmas Spreads To Lincoln Tunnel - Heard this story on NPR today. I thought it was a fun piece, well done. Both sides got to express opinions. And I'm pleased to note that so far (at least, based on what I've seen), the whole argument between the "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays" factions seems to be lower-key and less rabid than it was a year ago. Maybe both sides are painfully aware that we have bigger things to beat each other up about...
Anyway, here are my thoughts on the competing billboards.
Anyway, here are my thoughts on the competing billboards.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Religious Tolerance (?) in America
Since the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock, the country that we now know as the United States of America has been home to people who felt strongly about religion. The spiritual descendants of those early colonists are here today, along with a number of people who feel very strongly against religion. I suspect it’s all part of the same phenomenon, two sides of the same coin. So perhaps the seeds of our current discords have been there from the beginning.
Maybe Americans have always been incapable of believing anything in moderation. Dare I suggest that in this way, we are more like the people of the Middle East than we are like the people of Europe?
I mention Europe because the early settlers, the founders of those 13 colonies that would become the United States, came from there. I know, of course, that there were people here before the Europeans showed up; and people of all sorts have come from many other places in the intervening centuries. Still, much of what we used to call the “dominant” culture came from the colonists' European roots.
Lately I've thought maybe there was a fundamental difference in those Europeans who crossed the water to put down roots in the New World. I’ve seen some museum exhibits; I have a vague idea what trans-oceanic travel was like in those days, and it was no picnic. It took serious motivation to get on those ships, to leave behind the known world and venture into the new as a colonist, an explorer, a missionary. Every one of those people must have had an extraordinary need to conquer, some fervent belief, or a high sense of adventure; and perhaps some were so persecuted that they simply couldn’t stay where they were.
One could make the argument that everyone in Europe who had a capacity for living in moderation stayed home. Maybe that's why public discourse on religion is so much livelier in the U.S. than it seems to be on the other side of the Atlantic.
... although France's recent action to ban burqas appears to have ignited some sparks. More on that next time, perhaps.
Maybe Americans have always been incapable of believing anything in moderation. Dare I suggest that in this way, we are more like the people of the Middle East than we are like the people of Europe?
I mention Europe because the early settlers, the founders of those 13 colonies that would become the United States, came from there. I know, of course, that there were people here before the Europeans showed up; and people of all sorts have come from many other places in the intervening centuries. Still, much of what we used to call the “dominant” culture came from the colonists' European roots.
Lately I've thought maybe there was a fundamental difference in those Europeans who crossed the water to put down roots in the New World. I’ve seen some museum exhibits; I have a vague idea what trans-oceanic travel was like in those days, and it was no picnic. It took serious motivation to get on those ships, to leave behind the known world and venture into the new as a colonist, an explorer, a missionary. Every one of those people must have had an extraordinary need to conquer, some fervent belief, or a high sense of adventure; and perhaps some were so persecuted that they simply couldn’t stay where they were.
One could make the argument that everyone in Europe who had a capacity for living in moderation stayed home. Maybe that's why public discourse on religion is so much livelier in the U.S. than it seems to be on the other side of the Atlantic.
... although France's recent action to ban burqas appears to have ignited some sparks. More on that next time, perhaps.
Friday, September 10, 2010
On the Subject of Burning Books
Book burners give me the creeps.
I’ve been following the story of Terry Jones, the Florida preacher who announced plans to observe 9/11 with a “Burn the Koran Day.” As I write this, he appears to have called it off, but he may reconsider. I don’t know what he will do. But it gives me hope to see the range of people, from all areas of the political and religious spectrum, who have stood up and objected to his planned demonstration. Here’s a sampling:
A preacher on Fox News
John Kelso in the Austin American-Statesman
The Huffington Post
An Evangelical Christian website
Personally, I think book burners are about as low as the human race can go.
Of course, you’d expect to hear that from me. I’m crazy about books. I have three 8-foot bookcases in a fairly small house, a short pile of books on my nightstand, and more books in boxes that I can’t figure out where to put. I’ve loved books since I learned to read. Maybe even before that. I still have a few of my childhood favorites, and I treasure those books. I love them as much as I loved any pet I’ve owned. I know, in my rational mind, that books are inaminate objects. Just ink and paper, not alive and capable of loving back like a cat or a dog. But they’ve kept me warm through many a cold and lonely night. They contain characters who live in my imagination, and speak the wisdom of authors who are long gone, but in a sense immortal, because their words are still here.
I myself am an author. I have some idea what it takes to bring those words out and set them to paper. Writing a book is a lot like giving birth -- except that in my case, the gestation period was considerably longer.
I don’t have much respect for people who ban books. They do it, I suppose, when they don’t want others to find out what the book-banners don’t want them to know; or they don’t want others thinking what the book-banners don’t want them to think. Book banners are an affront to the American ideals of free speech and free expression.
Book burners have the same desire to squelch knowledge and expression, but they’re more into drama and violence. They don’t simply want to ban a book; they want to obliterate it. To take those words that someone composed with so much thought and turn them into smoke. To make sure that nobody will discover that book, years from now, in an attic or a library stack or a quirky used bookstore. They want to silence the voice, kill the ideas, and sear the flames into the public mind, in the hopes of sending a message to anyone who might dare to pose an unorthodox idea in the future.
Let me be clear here. I'm not talking about legal rights. If this preacher in Florida decides to go ahead with his Koran-burning, he has the right to stage that demonstration. Provided, of course, that any books destroyed were owned by the people that brought them to the fire. That means bought and paid for, or otherwise legally acquired. If they are snitched from libraries or bookstores, or taken by force from Muslims on the street, those who profess to be Christians need to review the Eighth Commandment.
I’ve been following the story of Terry Jones, the Florida preacher who announced plans to observe 9/11 with a “Burn the Koran Day.” As I write this, he appears to have called it off, but he may reconsider. I don’t know what he will do. But it gives me hope to see the range of people, from all areas of the political and religious spectrum, who have stood up and objected to his planned demonstration. Here’s a sampling:
A preacher on Fox News
John Kelso in the Austin American-Statesman
The Huffington Post
An Evangelical Christian website
Personally, I think book burners are about as low as the human race can go.
Of course, you’d expect to hear that from me. I’m crazy about books. I have three 8-foot bookcases in a fairly small house, a short pile of books on my nightstand, and more books in boxes that I can’t figure out where to put. I’ve loved books since I learned to read. Maybe even before that. I still have a few of my childhood favorites, and I treasure those books. I love them as much as I loved any pet I’ve owned. I know, in my rational mind, that books are inaminate objects. Just ink and paper, not alive and capable of loving back like a cat or a dog. But they’ve kept me warm through many a cold and lonely night. They contain characters who live in my imagination, and speak the wisdom of authors who are long gone, but in a sense immortal, because their words are still here.
I myself am an author. I have some idea what it takes to bring those words out and set them to paper. Writing a book is a lot like giving birth -- except that in my case, the gestation period was considerably longer.
I don’t have much respect for people who ban books. They do it, I suppose, when they don’t want others to find out what the book-banners don’t want them to know; or they don’t want others thinking what the book-banners don’t want them to think. Book banners are an affront to the American ideals of free speech and free expression.
Book burners have the same desire to squelch knowledge and expression, but they’re more into drama and violence. They don’t simply want to ban a book; they want to obliterate it. To take those words that someone composed with so much thought and turn them into smoke. To make sure that nobody will discover that book, years from now, in an attic or a library stack or a quirky used bookstore. They want to silence the voice, kill the ideas, and sear the flames into the public mind, in the hopes of sending a message to anyone who might dare to pose an unorthodox idea in the future.
Let me be clear here. I'm not talking about legal rights. If this preacher in Florida decides to go ahead with his Koran-burning, he has the right to stage that demonstration. Provided, of course, that any books destroyed were owned by the people that brought them to the fire. That means bought and paid for, or otherwise legally acquired. If they are snitched from libraries or bookstores, or taken by force from Muslims on the street, those who profess to be Christians need to review the Eighth Commandment.
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