misc on religion

yeah, you've seen it all before...

Melanie in Daily Kos on religion and liberalism. It starts about a page down and is well worth reading -

I'm both an intellectual, and religious. I know a whole lot of other people like me.

My [time] is spent in two parts of the Blogosphere: the liberal politics part, and the liberal religious part. Many, many other religious liberals have complained to me that the first part devotes a fair amount of energy to dissing or openly denigrating the second part...

Margaret Atwood - "The hijacking of religion by those bent on power grabs is an age-old theme and by no means limited to the Muslim world..."

via Echidne of the Snakes -

McSweeneys says Pat Robertson says vote No on Jesus

and religion according to Swedish children -

• Only the soul dies. The body continues living. (Elisabeth, 7)
  
• When it is twelve o'clock, everybody turns towards Mecca and chews on the fringes of the carpet. (Raymond, 7)
  
• Jesus was first a pupa, then a bug, then he grew wings and became a god. (Kate, 6)

via The Revealer ("The Revealer likes to harp on a theme, a rather vague notion of democratic religion writing -- the sort practiced by journalists more intrigued by the many manifestations of faith and faithlessness than by Religion's official proclamations and courtroom exhortations..."), a fascinating article in Harper's on so-called-Christian beliefs of The Family

On viewing equal treatment [of different religions] under the law as hostile to Christianity

Dahlia Lithwick in Slate:

There is a doctrinal tension built into the long tradition of walling off church from state, and also in the claim that this wall evinces no hostility toward the church. Of course chasing religion from the public square is hostile. The point is that it's the only means of avoiding a theocracy. The Rehnquist court has made its name by slowly chipping away at this wall. The good news for them: This case affords them a chance to do away with that messy tension once and for all. The bad news for the rest of us? The only way to do so will be to get rid of the wall altogether.