Here is a look at some news stories from around the web this week:
- Time: Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch has a record of protecting religious minorities, evidenced by his opinion in Hobby Lobby, which was later vindicated by the Supreme Court.
- In Virginia, lawyers for the Council on American-Islamic Relations asked a federal judge to issue an injunction against the entire executive order, which the lawyers claim would be broader than the injunctions issued by other federal courts around the country.
- Muslim and Jewish groups have been able to strengthen their bonds of friendship amid acts of bigotry undertaken against them.
- In Texas, legislators are considering bolstering religious protections for faith-based groups hired by the state to place children in foster homes.
- According to a study by the Pew Research Center, a majority of states have all Christian congressional delegations, despite the fact that only 71% of American adults identify as Christian.
- In Alabama, a megachurch is attempting to persuade legislators into allowing the church to employ its own police force.
- In the UK, more than a dozen faith leaders of different religions met with officers of Scotland Yard to discuss responses to the Westminster terrorist attack, and joined in condemning the attack while promoting solidarity.
- In Wales, a church is under pressure to reconsider its decision not promote a senior clergyman to bishop, after it appeared that the decision was made based on the clergyman’s sexuality.
- Yazidis in the Middle East who have fought against ISIS have been forced to flee again, as violent clashes have erupted between the Yazidis and Kurdish peshmerga forces.
Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there has been a widespread affirmation of economic ideologies that conceive the market as an autonomous sphere of human practice, holding that market principles should be applied to human action at large. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the ascendance of market reason has been countered by calls for reforms of financial markets and for the consideration of moral values in economic practice. This book intervenes in these debates by showing how neoliberal market practices engender new forms of religiosity, and how religiosity shapes economic actions. It reveals how religious movements and organizations have reacted to the increasing prominence of market reason in unpredictable, and sometimes counterintuitive, ways. Using a range of examples from different countries and religious traditions, the book illustrates the myriad ways in which religious and market moralities are closely imbricated in diverse global contexts.
Objects of Devotion: Religion in Early America tells the story of religion in the United States through the material culture of diverse spiritual pursuits in the nation’s colonial period and the early republic. The beautiful, full-color companion volume to a Smithsonian National Museum of American History exhibition, the book explores the wide range of religious traditions vying for adherents, acceptance, and a prominent place in the public square from the 1630s to the 1840s. The original thirteen states were home to approximately three thousand churches and more than a dozen Christian denominations, including Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Congregationalists, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Quakers. A variety of other faiths also could be found, including Judaism, Islam, traditional African practices, and Native American beliefs. As a result, America became known throughout the world as a place where, in theory, if not always in practice, all are free to believe and worship as they choose. The featured objects include an 1814 Revere and Sons church bell from Salem, the Jefferson Bible, wampum beads, a 1654 Torah scroll brought to the New World, the only known religious text written by an enslaved African Muslim, and other revelatory artifacts. Together these treasures illustrate how religious ideas have shaped the country and how the treatment and practice of religion have changed over time. Objects of Devotion emphasizes how religion can be understood through the objects, both rare and everyday, around which Americans of every generation have organized their communities and built this nation.