Oct 5, 2018
Original release June 14, 2013.
Encore release October 5, 2018.
Encore release June 28, 2017.
After a local politician in Manchester, Tennessee posted an anti-Muslim image online, the American Muslim Advisory Council organized a public event aimed at encouraging discussion of religion diversity and informing citizens about the difference between free speech and hate crimes. The locals were less than receptive, booing, heckling and shouting down the speakers.
A high school valedictorian in Pickens County, South Carolina ripped up his pre-approved speech and instead recited the Lord's Prayer--all in protest of school policy prohibiting sectarian prayers at school events.
The House of Representatives are appalled at the idea of allowing Humanists, Ethical Culturalists, and members of similar nonreligious groups to be chaplains in the US military. Never mind that there are plenty of soldiers who share those views and who deserve counseling from someone who shares their worldview.
There's a slow trickle of churches dissociating themselves from the Boy Scouts in response to their recent policy change, which allows gay scouts but not gay scout leaders. It remains to be seen if this trickle will become a torrent.
Finally, we discuss The Revisionaries, a new documentary that looks at the recent (largely successful) attempt at religious conservatives to skew the Texas public school toward their worldview. The documentary is available on SundanceNow, Netflix, and elsewhere. For more visit TheRevisionariesMovie.com.
Plus: John recommends the late Muhammad Asad's memoir The Road to Mecca, as well as the recent documentary about him. Asad was born in 1900 as Leopold Weiss, a secular Jew from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who converted to Islam in his 20s, hobnobbed with all the movers and shakers in the Middle East, wrote a translation with commentary of the Quran that's still in print, and went on to be one of the architects of Pakistan's constitution and that country's delegate to the United Nations.