‘Religious freedom nowadays seems to take second place to other sorts of freedom.’… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Reactionary Pope Meddles With Secular Law
Feb 1st, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonJoins bishops in demanding right to impose religious law everywhere.… Read the rest
Pope Attacks UK’s Equality Legislation
Feb 1st, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘The truth revealed through scripture and tradition and articulated by the Church’s Magisterium sets us free.’… Read the rest
Real Men Think Church is Too Girly
Feb 1st, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMen like to be waited on – if they are not made to feel guilty. So tell the women to serve them! And smile!… Read the rest
Summer camp or boarding school
Jan 31st, 2010 5:27 pm | By Ophelia BensonTen members of an American Baptist Church are to appear in a Haitian court this morning after being accused of running an illegal adoption scheme. The group from Idaho said that they were carrying out a rescue mission and had accompanied more than 30 children as part of a plan to take at least 100 orphans out of Port-au-Prince to an orphanage that they run in the neighbouring Dominican Republic…She said that the group had documents from the Dominican Governmen but did not seek any paperwork from the Haitian authorities…
Why not? Did they try? Was it impossible in the circumstances? The article doesn’t say. At any rate clearly documents from another government do not amount to … Read the rest
Church Will Fight to Keep ‘Divine Right’ to Children
Jan 31st, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIn Ireland the bishops and priests who controlled the schools behaved like dictators for generations.… Read the rest
Catholicism Shrinking in South Jersey
Jan 31st, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt’s a start.… Read the rest
Haiti: Idaho Church Group Accused of Abduction
Jan 31st, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOne girl, aged 8 or 9, was crying and saying, ‘I’m not an orphan. I still have my parents.’… Read the rest
‘Homeopathic Remedies’: Real Cure or Nonsense?
Jan 31st, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThere is no evidence that homeopathy works, yet it gets public funding.… Read the rest
A Gift to the Creationists
Jan 31st, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA book titled What Darwin Got Wrong that’s not by a creationist.… Read the rest
Deciding in advance
Jan 30th, 2010 1:55 pm | By Ophelia BensonWheaton College has a ‘statement of faith’ that everyone at Wheaton has to ‘follow.’ The statement is long, and specific, and detailed. It’s not a mere cloud of benevolent sentiments, it’s a list of concrete factual assertions prefaced by ‘we believe that,’ and agreeing to the whole thing is, as I understand it, a condition of employment and attendance. It includes (and ends with) ‘WE BELIEVE in the bodily resurrection of the just and unjust, the everlasting punishment of the lost.’
Yet Wheaton College considers itself an academic institution of some kind. Wheaton College considers itself a place of higher education, yet a condition of getting the putative higher education that Wheaton College offers is agreement with a long … Read the rest
Simon Singh and Andy Lewis on Homeopathy
Jan 30th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFilmed by Stephen Law at the CFI UK Trick or Treatment event.… Read the rest
‘New Perspectives on Faith and Development’
Jan 30th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTony Blair Faith Foundation, Islamic Relief et al. to host ‘groundbreaking’ seminars on Faith and Development.… Read the rest
Oliver Kamm on Howard Zinn
Jan 30th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIf your heart is in the right place, the assumption is, then it doesn’t matter if your scholarship is sloppy.… Read the rest
The Boston Globe on Howard Zinn
Jan 30th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHis books and plays are about the power of ordinary people to affect history.… Read the rest
Rules of supermarket deportment
Jan 29th, 2010 1:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonA brief frivolous interlude to consider one small aspect of daily life.
A Tesco store has asked customers not to shop in their pyjamas or barefoot…A spokesman said Tesco did not have a strict dress code but it does not want people shopping in their nightwear in case it offends other customers.
Or not so much offends them as makes them feel sick. That’s how it affects me. The sight of people outside in the world in their bedroom slippers, or with bed hair, or in their pyjamas, makes me feel very queasy indeed. It’s much the same if I see people flossing their teeth or cutting their toenails in public; or picking their noses, or applying unguents to … Read the rest
Iran Executes 2 Mohareb or ‘Enemies of God’
Jan 29th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe prosecutor’s office said nine other detained protesters have been condemned to death as Mohareb.… Read the rest
Orthodoxy Enforcement at Wheaton College
Jan 29th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWheaton is nondenominational, but has a detailed statement of faith that all at the college must follow.… Read the rest
Ogling Teaches Women to Self-objectify
Jan 29th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhen a female believes her body is being sized up by a male, she’ll diminish her presence by speaking less. … Read the rest
Questioning Homophobic Pseudoscience
Jan 29th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘That a child needs a male parent and a female parent is so taken for granted that people are uncritical.’… Read the rest