Category: freedom of belief

The Long Road to Confronting China’s War on Religion, Part III

Commentary It’s morning in Istanbul, but Joseph is reliving his morning routine in the camp, before the 16-hour shift starts. After the prisoners had sung Communist songs for their breakfast, the Chinese guards played a video for them shot in cinema verité style. It began with Chinese plainclothes agents tackling Uyghurs, cramming them into unmarked…


The Long Road to Confronting China’s War on Religion, Part II

Commentary Falun Gong emerged in China in 1992, a time of a spiritual renewal in a land still under Communist rule, but one recovering from the horrors of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Drawing on Buddhist traditions, Falun Gong combined meditation and tai chi-style exercises with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of “zhen,” “shan,”…


The Long Road to Confronting China’s War on Religion, Part I

Commentary In 2016, when Chinese leader Xi Jinping delivered a speech calling for the “Sinicization of religion” in a nation of one billion, he was espousing a century-old impulse among his people while also inadvertently underscoring a persistent paradox that Chinese Communists brought with them when they took over the country in 1949—and have never…


Aussie Basketball Team Opts out of Wearing Pride Jersey Due to ‘Barrage of Abuse’

Team members of the Cairns Taipans have decided against wearing a special Pride Round jersey in response to a “barrage of abuse and harmful commentary” targeting individual players. The Australian National Basketball League (NBL) is holding its first Pride Round to celebrate the LGBT community from Jan. 25 to 30, with Commissioner Jeremy Loeliger conceding…


Pope Benedict XVI and Human Freedom

Commentary The resignation of the Pope in 2013 was a decision that completely shocked the world, partially because for a traditionalist like Benedict XVI, it seemed like a highly untraditional thing to do. But as head of the Holy Office in the last years of the previous pontificate, Cardinal Ratzinger watched with deep pain as…


Pharmacist Who Refused Woman Morning-After Pill Did Not Violate Rights, Rules Minnesota Jury

A jury in Aitkin County, Minnesota, ruled on Aug. 5 that a pharmacist’s decision to refuse a woman a morning-after pill was not discrimination. In January 2019, Andrea Anderson, a mother of five children, sought to buy the morning-after pill Ella from the McGregor Thrifty White Pharmacy in her town. She carried a prescription from…


[PREMIERING 7:30PM ET] Fired for Praying in Public: High School Coach’s Supreme Court Case Will Decide Future of Religious Freedom

A case being heard at the Supreme Court could determine whether Americans are free to pray in public, or whether any type of public religious expression can get them fired from their jobs. Coach Joe Kennedy lost his job for doing just this, after he began praying on the football field in Bremerton School District,…


[PREMIERING NOW] Fired for Praying in Public: Coach’s Supreme Court Case Will Decide Future of Religious Freedom

A case being heard at the Supreme Court could determine whether Americans are free to pray in public, or whether any type of public religious expression can get them fired from their jobs. Coach Joe Kennedy lost his job for doing just this, after he began praying on the football field in Bremerton School District,…


[PREMIERING 4/29 at 7:30PM ET] Fired for Praying in Public: High School Coach’s Supreme Court Case Will Decide Future of Religious Freedom

A case being heard at the Supreme Court could determine whether Americans are free to pray in public, or whether any type of public religious expression can get them fired from their jobs. Coach Joe Kennedy lost his job for doing just this, after he began praying on the football field in Bremerton School District,…


COVID-19 and the Failure of America’s Major Religions

Commentary For two years, Americans have been partially or entirely deprived of fundamental freedoms—of assembly, speech, religious liberty, making a living, a child’s right to an education, access to early treatment for a potentially deadly virus, and more—for the first time in American history. That half of America, especially its elites, has either made peace…