I often get emails from students and parents asking about “Bible as literature” or “Bible as history” courses — are they legal? Can we stop them? My usual response is that they are legal… as long as the Bible is not being taught as fact. The Texas Freedom Network, a conservative watchdog group, just released a report on public school Bible courses throughout the state — they studied courses in 57 public school districts and three charter schools — and have some alarming news for anyone who thought this was anything but a backdoor approach to forcing Christianity into the school system. Read more
You know, at least when Christopher Hitchens wrote his diatribe against Mother Teresa, she was still alive. Richard Seymour, on the other hand, has written his polemic against Hitchens a year after his death. Classy. Read more
At the Illinois Family Institute’s website, Micah Clark (of the American Family Association of Indiana) has written a brief article about a recent U.S. Department of Justice report (PDF) that “examines patterns in serious violent crime and simple assault” against youth. Clark highlights one of the report’s main findings: Read more
Maybe we’ve been using the wrong angle when it comes to protecting a woman’s right to choose. Over at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Valerie Tarico has written an interesting piece in which she asks whether abortion can be framed as a blessing. Tarico claims that pro-choicers have lost the moral high ground in the ongoing debate and that has led to a backlash in women’s rights. Read more
In an interview with Esquire, Megan Fox showed a side of herself that we’ve never seen before: The one that speaks in tongues: Read more
Morning Edition on NPR is running a weeklong series on “Losing Our Religion” and today’s story focuses on relationships in which one person is an atheist and the other is not. Looks like they picked a perfect couple to profile, too: Read more
