What is it about football coaches that makes them more susceptible to violate the First Amendment? The latest example of a football coach preaching Jesus to his players is Chris Wells of Middletown High School. Read more
It isn’t known what grave sins the late Marco Gusmini may have committed. We can only surmise that the Almighty smote Gusmini for a reason — and we do know He did so in an impressively original way. Read more
Christian writer Dannah Gresh has identified a major problem with church: It turns out church is just too damn dangerous. You see, some women dress provocatively… and some husbands just can’t deal with it… So Gresh says women are 100% to blame. Read more
Todd Starnes must be running out of Christian martyr stories because he’s grasping at straws in his latest tale. Last April, Brandon Jenkins applied to get into a Radiation Therapy program at the Community College of Baltimore County. The program was competitive, so he had to do an in-person interview. Unfortunately, even after that, they didn’t accept him. To no one’s surprise, Starnes and conservative David French have concluded that Jenkins’ faith is to blame for the rejection. The American Center for Law and Justice (a Christian advocacy group) has already filed a lawsuit against the school. Read more
I really don’t understand how anyone could look at the situation taking place on the Clemson University football team — where the coach’s Christianity is allowed to run rampant and players are pressured to attend religious events even if it’s outside of practice — and think it’s okay. My theory is that they don’t think it’s a big deal because it’s the faith of the majority. “Everyone” in South Carolina is Christian, so what’s the big deal if it seeps onto the football field? But that’s precisely the problem. Everyone on the team, Coach Dabo Swinney included, can practice their faith as they wish, but when you’re in uniform representing a public university, there’s no room for proselytizing. No non-Christian player should have to choose between pretending to be religious to curry favor with the coach and being true to their own beliefs. There’s plenty of opportunity to hold religious events off the field — so why not just leave it there?. (I’d say the same thing if we were talking about an atheist coach pressuring players to stop believing in God. As if that would ever happen.) Ellen Meny wrote an article for The Tiger News, the school’s newspaper, that’s downright hilarious. Meny wants to say that there’s no proselytizing problem and groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation are making a big deal out of nothing: Read more
I don’t care how annoying he might be. I would still give my first-born to work alongside Neil deGrasse Tyson: Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses why you’re not broken, no matter what Christianity teaches: We’d love to hear your thoughts on the project — more videos will be posted soon — and we’d also appreciate your suggestions as to which questions we ought to tackle next! And if you like what you’re seeing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon. Read more
Back in December, I posted about a proposed new law school in British Columbia affiliated with (Christian) Trinity Western University where gay students who acted on their sexual orientation would not be allowed through the doors: At the time, I defended the school’s right to exist. My thinking was that, like private Christian schools in the United States, they could discriminate however they’d like — and it won’t ultimately matter since the students would still have to learn and defend Canadian law as written and pass the Canadian version of the bar exam. In other words, their Christian anti-gay bigotry wouldn’t work in the real world. Read more
We learned a couple of weeks ago that Hobby Lobby President Steve Green had developed a Bible curriculum for public schools and that Oklahoma’s Mustang Public Schools board had voted to approve it and become the first district to implement it. The course would focus on the “narrative, history and impact of the Good Book.” Green had said in a video that he believed the course should be mandatory, though for now, it would be an elective. (To no one’s surprise, Glenn Beck is a full-on supporter of the course.) There are already such courses in public schools around the country and they’re legal because they don’t treat the Bible as a Holy Book. (Though even that line is crossed far more than it should.) I think most defenders of church/state separation would agree that there’s a lot of value in teaching about the Bible because of the role it plays in literature, culture, and our own history… as long as you follow a simple rule: You can teach the Bible, but you can’t preach the Bible. That brings us to the big question about what the Oklahoma district is doing: Will Steve Green’s Bible curriculum really be objective? The Freedom From Religion Foundation requested a copy of the curriculum last November — but they still haven’t gotten ahold of it. However, they did get their hands on the textbook for the course (from an unnamed source). And the biggest surprise may be that the cover isn’t a series of red flags. Read more
In what may be the most unnecessary poll I’ve seen in a long time, LifeWay Research asked Americans whether or not they prefer to keep “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and — *gasp* — they overwhelmingly said yes: Read more
