Four cases involving religion have worked their way from the UK to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. These Christians claimed that they were discriminated against because of their religion. According to the BBC, the cases are:

Nadia Eweida, a Pentecostal Christian from Twickenham, south-west London, who was sent home by her employer British Airways in 2006 after refusing to remove a necklace with a cross.

Devon-based nurse Shirley Chaplin, who was moved to a desk job by Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust Hospital for similar reasons.

Gary McFarlane, a Bristol relationship counsellor, who was sacked by Relate after saying on a training course he might have had a conscientious objection to giving sex therapy advice to gay couples.

Registrar Lilian Ladele, who was disciplined after she refused to conduct same-sex civil partnership ceremonies in north London.

Lawyers for the British government argued before the EHCR that employers had every right to regulate expressions of religion in the professional sphere.

I have no idea what the laws are that apply in the UK and in the EHCR, but on general principles, my own feeling is that in the first two cases the plaintiffs have some grounds for complaint. Wearing a necklace with a cross, if it is not a hazard in the workplace, seems harmless enough. But this has to be balanced with the right of a private employer (as in the first case of the above four) to enforce a uniform dress code.

I have no sympathy for the plaintiffs in the other two cases though. People who are hired to do a job that involves meeting the needs of the public should not be allowed to unilaterally decide which members of that public to serve and which to deny services.

Reader Jeff sent along an article about Hasidic Jews, one of the groups that most tries to protect their young from the outside world, who are finding that their young are leaving because the internet is showing them that the world is different from what they were told by their elders. [Read more…]

The city of New York is proposing legislation that would require parents to sign a form giving consent to a specific circumcision practice that is unhygienic and runs the risk of infecting the infant with genital herpes that can lead to serious illness and even possibly death. [Read more…]

Laws against blasphemy have rarely been about religious dogma. They are, like anti-terrorism statutes, political weapons that are available to intimidate and ensure conformity in the population. The very vagueness of the concepts of terrorism and blasphemy allow them to be interpreted so broadly that almost any action can be interpreted as breaking the law. These weapons are invariably used by the most extreme elements of society. [Read more…]

I have written before about the absurd dietary rules imposed by religions. The Mormons have their own bizarre prohibitions and one of those was supposed to be to avoid caffeine. Hence I was surprised to read in some news reports that Mitt Romney drank Diet Coke because by all accounts he is a devout Mormon with the rank of bishop, not just some ordinary guy in the pews (if Mormon temples have pews in their temples). [Read more…]

In his article trying to explain the decline of religion in the US that I commented on a couple of days ago, Rod Dreher pinned the blame on Christian institutions being too liberal and abandoning traditional verities in favor of what he sees as a post-modern sensibility that demands nothing from its followers and has abandoned its core principles. He calls for a return to a “traditional religion, with its truth claims and strictures”. [Read more…]

The comments by the Catholic priest Benedict Groeschel that I wrote about yesterday, where he seemed to view sexual abusers like priests and even Jerry Sandusky with indulgence while suggesting that their victims may be the real predators who may have seduced them, created a predictable uproar. [Read more…]

I have referred before to the WIN-Gallup survey of 57 countries that showed a decline in religion worldwide and a rise in disbelief. When you have a global phenomenon, the reasons for it are likely to be global in scope as well. My argument (made in a series of posts titled Why Atheism is Winning) is that it is the inevitable march of modernity that is slowly but surely killing religion. Religion has no escape. It is anchored in the past by its holy texts and that anchor is a major drag on it, causing it to steadily fall behind even as science and technology are rapidly moving the world forward. [Read more…]