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Ten years ago the state of California found itself embroiled in a debate over the nature of marriage. Listed on the ballot for the Fall elections was Proposition 8, which would amend the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.
By Jason Hines, Ph.D., J.D. am slightly ashamed and embarrassed that it takes incidents like what happened in Charlottesville yesterday to drive me back into the writer’s chair. I guess the very thing I have criticized has affected me. It becomes monotonous to continue to write 500-1000 words about how everything is going on in our society today is […]
By Jason Hines – I’m sitting here without a plan. I do not even have a rough outline of where these thoughts will go. If I have a plan, it is simply to write because the Spectrum Blog needs a post for Thursday morning and there is nothing else I want to talk about. I sit here writing now not […]
For almost 40 years Evangelical Christians, under the guise of the Religious Right, courted political power specifically through the Republican Party. As a political group, they have accomplished little of what they desired.
By Jason Hines, Ph.D., J.D. – One of the unfortunate things about the discussion that occurs whenever a police officer shoots another unarmed Black man is its monotony. I was planning to sit out the debate that would occur around the death of Alton Sterling. The reason I wanted to sit the discussion out is because we always seem to hit the same beats. Black folk say #BlackLivesMatter. The ignorant and the bigots among us say #AllLivesMatter. Before long, someone asks, “What about Black on Black crime?”
By Jason Hines, PhD, JD – Prior to 1990, the Supreme Court’s standard in determining whether a law violated a citizen’s free exercise of religion was intimately tied to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. An Adventist, Adele Sherbert, sued to receive unemployment benefits after she was fired from her job because she refused to work on the Sabbath. In the case that now bears her name, Sherbert v. Verner, the Court ruled in her favor, establishing the rule that the government could not substantially burden a citizen’s religious freedom unless the government had a compelling interest and had narrowly tailored the measure to minimize infringement.
Davis has made a decision according to her conscience, has had the willingness to not only follow it through, but also to go to jail for it. I am surprisingly both outraged by and sympathetic to her plight. I would love to talk about the legal ramifications of what she is doing (and I still might do that briefly), but tonight my mind turns primarily to the spiritual consequences of Davis's actions.
By Jason Hines, PhD, JD – Has Christianity in America become so materialistic that we conflate our freedom to worship with our ability to save a dollar?
By Jason Hines – This week, Governor Mike Pence held a press conference in order to clarify the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act that has received so much criticism lately.
By Jason Hines – Attacks on the President's faith are an attempt to redefine the constitutional role of religion in American life. Both Senator Santorum and Pastor Graham have established a de facto religious test for the office of President. Why does it matter to Pastor Graham whether President Obama is a Christian? Why does it matter to Senator Santorum that Obama has a phony, unchristian theology? These things matter because to them a person should not be president unless they are Christian. And that Christianity cannot just be any Christianity, but a form of Christianity that is aligned with what they think is correct.