Reaffirming the Smith Decision Despite the political outcry over the Smith opinion, the court reaffirmed the decision’s basic principle three years later. The case, Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah (1993), involved a series of ordinances passed by the Florida city in response to the ritual practice of animal sacrifice by […]
Similar measures considered in several other states have failed in the state legislature or at the ballot box, while polls show the country still divided on the issue.
Expansion and Contraction of Free Exercise Rights Early in the tenure of Chief Justice Warren Burger, who was appointed to lead the Supreme Court in 1969, the court issued a decision that dramatically reinforced the principles laid down in Sherbert. The case, Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), involved a challenge by members of the Old Order […]
Pew Forum Faith Angle Conference Key West, Florida Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in December 2007 for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. Stephen Prothero, chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University, discussed the issue of religious illiteracy in the […]
by John C. Green, Senior Fellow in Religion and American Politics For the presidential candidates and the pundits who write about them, one concern in the 2008 campaign is the “religion gap” – shorthand for the religious differences between Republican and Democratic voters. An analysis of national exit polls from 2004 shows there is not […]
Few Palestinian families have deeper roots in Jerusalem than Sari Nusseibeh’s. In the 7th century, immediately after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, the caliph Omar the Great entrusted one of Nusseibeh’s ancestors with the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. From childhood onward, Nusseibeh, who was educated as a philosopher at Oxford and […]
Pew Forum Faith Angle Conference Key West, Florida http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?autostart=false&brandname=Pew%20Forum&brandlink=https://www.pewresearch.org/religion&showplayerpath=http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf&file=http://religionsecularism.blip.tv/rss/flash?sort=date&nsfw=dc&user=McClayForum&showguidebutton=false&showsharebutton=true&showfsbutton=true&showplaylist=trueWatch more event video on the multimedia page. More from the December 2007 Faith Angle Conference Religious Literacy: What Every American Should Know The Religion Factor in the 2008 Election More: Research, news, blogs Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in December, […]