It’s good to see high-ranking church officials beginning to be held to account for their role in covering up the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic church. [Read more…]

If the BBC, rather than asking Rod Dreher and David Ellis Dickerson, had asked me to give reasons for the global decline in religion, I would have pointed to two things: the rise in acceptance of science in popular culture, and the internet (and of course bacon). I would have agreed with Dickerson that the increasing acceptance of homosexuality by the general public has put traditional religion in a bind and is speeding up the process but I disagree with Dreher that the fault lies with mainstream Christianity abandoning orthodoxy. [Read more…]

Recently, the Israeli government, in one of its periodic attempts to placate worldwide opposition to its settlement expansion policies, forced some settlers to withdraw because of a court order. The angry settlers retaliated, not against the government, but by vandalizing a Christian monastery and painted the words “Jesus is a monkey” in large orange letters on the outside walls. It is an odd thing to write, when you think about it, because all humans are in a sense monkeys since they are our evolutionary cousins. Why a monkey? Perhaps it was inspired by the recent “Rhesus Christ” incident. [Read more…]

Four cases involving religion have worked their way from the UK to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. These Christians claimed that they were discriminated against because of their religion. According to the BBC, the cases are:

Nadia Eweida, a Pentecostal Christian from Twickenham, south-west London, who was sent home by her employer British Airways in 2006 after refusing to remove a necklace with a cross.

Devon-based nurse Shirley Chaplin, who was moved to a desk job by Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust Hospital for similar reasons.

Gary McFarlane, a Bristol relationship counsellor, who was sacked by Relate after saying on a training course he might have had a conscientious objection to giving sex therapy advice to gay couples.

Registrar Lilian Ladele, who was disciplined after she refused to conduct same-sex civil partnership ceremonies in north London.

Lawyers for the British government argued before the EHCR that employers had every right to regulate expressions of religion in the professional sphere.

I have no idea what the laws are that apply in the UK and in the EHCR, but on general principles, my own feeling is that in the first two cases the plaintiffs have some grounds for complaint. Wearing a necklace with a cross, if it is not a hazard in the workplace, seems harmless enough. But this has to be balanced with the right of a private employer (as in the first case of the above four) to enforce a uniform dress code.

I have no sympathy for the plaintiffs in the other two cases though. People who are hired to do a job that involves meeting the needs of the public should not be allowed to unilaterally decide which members of that public to serve and which to deny services.

Reader Jeff sent along an article about Hasidic Jews, one of the groups that most tries to protect their young from the outside world, who are finding that their young are leaving because the internet is showing them that the world is different from what they were told by their elders. [Read more…]