Interestingly, 2018 turned out to be a very strong year for folktales, fairy tales, and religious stories. Why? Well, look closely and you'll see that this is nothing so much as a gathering of small publishers. It's like I always say. The more the big guys consolidate, the more cracks and fissures remain for the little folks to sneak through. Here then are the titles published in 2018 that really stood out and shone:

In a case from Montana, conservative justices suggested they were inclined to rule for parents who seek to reinstate a state tax credit funding scholarships for use at religious schools.

Groups on all sides of the debate over private school choice agree that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling will be tremendously consequential. But it may take some time for the ripple effects to spread.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a decision by Montana's highest court that struck down a tuition tax-credit program allowing tuition scholarships to benefit students at private religious schools.

The justices ruled 5-4 that a Montana state constitutional provision barring aid to religion discriminated against religious schools and families seeking to benefit from a tax credit for donations for scholarships.

The case being heard by the Supreme Court next week deals with a debate that has raged since the 19th century about federal education funding for private religious schools.

The new U.S. Department of Education guidance creates a federal process for individuals and organizations to file complaints under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The 5-4 decision involving a dispute in Montana appears to cast doubt on as many as 30 state constitutions that bar aid to religious schools.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit turns away claims of religious discrimination by families seeking to use Maine's "tuitioning" program.

Danville Christian Academy is seeking emergency relief from the COVID-19 closure order after losing in federal appeals court.

The Trump administration backs three families seeking to require the state of Maine to pay tuition for their children to attend religious high schools.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit turns away claims of religious discrimination by families seeking to use Maine's "tuitioning" program.

A group of Texas high school cheerleaders filed a petition with the state Supreme Court over an ongoing dispute about the display of banners with religious messages at high school football games.

The new U.S. Department of Education guidance creates a federal process for individuals and organizations to file complaints under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Under Article 8 of Law No. 80, which governs the construction and restoration of churches in Egypt, the government continues to support religious institutions by aligning them with legal standards.

Title: Doctors' Religious Beliefs Can Color Their Care of Terminally Ill
Category: Health News
Created: 8/26/2010 2:10:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 8/27/2010 12:00:00 AM

Title: Obama Administration Offers New Rules for Religious Objections to Health Care Law
Category: Health News
Created: 8/25/2014 9:35:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/25/2014 12:00:00 AM

Mark Stibbe was one of John Smyth's victims. He's a former vicar and is now an author.

Jun 2, 2024

Ethnic cleansing is not only a modern phenomenon. The medieval Catholic Church saw non-Christians as a threat and facilitated the ethnoreligious cleansing of Muslim and Jewish communities across Western Europe. Three conditions made this possible: The rising power of the papacy as a supranational religious authority; its dehumanization of non-Christians; and competition among Catholic Western European monarchs that left them vulnerable to papal-clerical demands to eradicate non-Christians. These findings revise our understanding twentieth- and twenty-first-century ethnic cleansing in places like Cambodia, Iraq, Myanmar, the Soviet Union, and Syria.

Bristol : Bristol University Press, [2023]

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2023]

Complaint lodged by LDF Wayanad Parliamentary Committee says Congress violated electoral rules and regulations

National Bureau of Economic Research

Parading of elephants should be strictly restricted to registered temples, churches, mosques, and rituals which are associated with these institutions. Any introduction of new rituals or reviving of dormant rituals should not be permitted.

Opposition accuses CM of turning a blind eye to the infiltration of the IAS by fundamentalists

University Park, PA : Pennsylvania State University Press

Many people visit snake pits at various places in the city and perform pujas

The CBDT (Central Board of Direct Taxes) has extended the period of re-registering charitable and religious trusts under the Finance Act 2020 to 1 October. In the view of the unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19 that has caused a humanitarian and economic

The CBDT (Central Board of Direct Taxes) has extended the period of re-registering charitable and religious trusts under the Finance Act 2020 to 1 October. In the view of the unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19 that has caused a humanitarian and economic

In 2013 we had the long awaited decisions in the combined appeals brought in the cases of Eweida and others v The United Kingdom.  These comprised the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, applying the right to freedom of thought cons...

The Chairman of the Christian Council of Nigeria, Enugu State chapter, Archbishop Barr. Christopher Ede, has stated that he did not announce that ban on religious activities have been lifted in Enugu State, as is being erroneously peddled in the media. Reacting to a media report credited to him to the effect that Enugu State […]

“I did not announce ban lift on religious activities in Enugu” – Archbishop Ede

Just this week, the Justice Department got behind a rural Virginia church's claim that the state improperly discriminated against it by limiting its gatherings.

For the second time, a federal judge has issued a restraining order against Kentucky officials who moved to block church services during the coronavirus shutdown.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove ruled Friday night in favor of Tabernacle Baptist Church of Nicholasville and against Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear's order ...

Louis Duxbury (pictured outside York Crown Court) was found guilty of inciting religious hatred after the Facebook tirade. He claimed he was exercising his right to free speech.

Actor Vijay Sethupathi recently got into trouble for allegedly hurting the religious sentiments of many people. Popularly known as Makkal Selvan, Vijay's recently online interaction with Kamal Haasan caught everyone's attention and also landed Kamal Haasan in trouble. He had called

Nuns with the Little Sisters of The Poor, including Sister Celestine, left, and Sister Jeanne Veronique, center, rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington on March 23, 2016.; Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

The birth-control wars return to the Supreme Court Wednesday, and it is likely that the five-justice conservative majority will make it more difficult for women to get birth control if they work for religiously affiliated institutions like hospitals, charities and universities.

At issue in the case is a Trump administration rule that significantly cuts back on access to birth control under the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare, the massive overhaul of the health care system, sought to equalize preventive health care coverage for women and men by requiring employers to include free birth control in their health care plans.

Listen to the arguments live beginning at 10 a.m. ET.

Houses of worship like churches and synagogues were automatically exempted from the provision, but religiously affiliated nonprofits like universities, charities and hospitals were not. Such organizations employ millions of people, many of whom want access to birth control for themselves and their family members. But many of these institutions say they have a religious objection to providing birth control for employees.

For these nonprofits, the Obama administration enacted rules providing a work-around to accommodate employers' religious objections. The workaround was that an employer was to notify the government, or the insurance company, or the plan administrator, that, for religious reasons, it would not be providing birth-control coverage to its employees. Then, the insurance company could provide free birth-control options to individual employees separately from the employer's plan.

But some religiously affiliated groups still objected, saying the work-around was not good enough, and sued. They contended that signing an opt-out form amounted to authorizing the use of their plan for birth control. Among those objectors was the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic nuns that runs homes for the elderly poor.

The Supreme Court punted in 2016

The Little Sisters sued, and their case first reached the Supreme Court in 2016. At the time, Sister Constance Viet explained why she refused to sign any opt-out form, saying that "the religious burden is what that signifies and the fact that the government would ... be inserting services that we object into our plan. And it would still carry our name."

Back then, when the Little Sisters' case got to the Supreme Court, the justices basically punted, telling the government and the sisters to work together to try to reach a compromise that would still provide "seamless birth control" coverage for employees who want it, without burdening the Sisters' religious beliefs. Although the Little Sisters did eventually get relief from the lower courts, the fight over the accommodations rules continued right up to the end of the Obama administration.

But when President Trump came into office, the administration issued new rules that would give broad exemptions to nonprofits and some for-profit companies that have objections to providing birth-control coverage for their employees. And the new rules expanded the category of employers who would be exempt from the birth-control mandate to include not just those with religious objections, but those with moral objections, too.

New rules

Those new rules, currently blocked by lower courts, are what is at issue Wednesday in the Supreme Court.

"Many states are suing and none of them can find a single actual woman who claims she's been harmed," says Mark Reinezi, president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is defending the Trump rules against challenges brought by Pennsylvania and other states.

And, he adds, "there are many other ways to provide contraceptive coverage to people if they happen to work for religious objectors."

Rienzi says that employees who work for birth-control objectors can get coverage from their spouse's insurance plan, or by switching to a different insurance plan on an Obamacare exchange. And he says that birth control is also available under a program known as Title X, which gives money to state and local governments to provide health care for women.

But Brigitte Amiri, the deputy director the of ACLU's Reproductive Freedom project, says the idea that Title X could make up for the lost coverage is "a joke." Amiri notes that the Title X program has been underfunded for years, and the Trump administration has issued new regulations that in her words "decimated the program."

According to Amiri, "the Trump administration and Vice President [Mike] Pence have long wanted to ... take away coverage for contraception. They want to block access to birth control. They want to block access to abortion ... so this is all part and parcel of the overall attack on access to reproductive health care."

Potential consequences

She maintains that if the expanded Trump rules are upheld for religious objectors, hundreds of thousands of women across the country will lose their contraceptive coverage. Ultimately, Amiri says, there just is no way to maintain birth-control coverage for employees who work for religiously affiliated institutions unless that employer, as she puts it, is willing to "raise their hand" to opt out.

A break in birth-control coverage that big could have serious consequences, say say birth-control advocates. They note that the National Academy of Medicine, a health policy nonprofit, recommended the original rules because birth control is prescribed not just to avoid pregnancy but also to treat various female medical conditions. In fact, it is the most frequently taken drug for women ages 15-60. And it is expensive, $30 a month and more for pills, and as much as $1,000 for buying and having an IUD inserted.

Birth-control advocates say that's the very reason that a broad requirement to cover birth control in insurance was included in Obamacare. They say the new Trump rule improperly undermines that mandate.

But selling that argument to the Supreme Court will be hard. When the court last considered this issue in 2016, its makeup was far less conservative than it is now. Since then, two Trump appointees have been added to the court. And both of those appointees — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — have already indicated strong support for the notion that religious rights may often trump other rights.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

To broaden support for space exploration, advocates should consider approaching religious groups.

The effect was greatest as kids got older, with tweens increasingly less likely to share.

2,500-year-old stone slab could offer clues to deciphering the lost language and religion of the Etruscans.