The Daily Signal reports on faith and religion in America, covering Christian, Jewish, and other faith communities, with analysis and commentary on cultural trends, religious liberty, and moral issues that influence public life.
An Iowa State University instructor’s syllabus warned students that anti-Black Lives Matter and pro-life viewpoints are “grounds for dismissal.” Instructor Chloe Clark’s English 250 syllabus includes a “giant warning” advising students that only certain views would be permitted during her classes. “I take this seriously,” she notes at the end of the warning. “Any instances of othering…
As the nation prepares to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and looks back on the impact of women throughout the last century, we should remember one woman who broke not just gender barriers but racial barriers, and influenced the course of the nation: Mildred Jefferson. Jefferson was a bona fide pro-life icon….
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services took two important steps Tuesday to protect religious freedom during the COVID-19 pandemic. The agency’s Office for Civil Rights announced that patients at hospitals within the University of Maryland Medical System may receive visits by clergy amid the pandemic. And, the office said, a medical student at…
The Supreme Court strengthened the separation of church and state Wednesday and, for once, that’s a good thing. The “separation” most people think of was created by the Supreme Court by interpreting the First Amendment’s ban on an “establishment of religion” far too broadly. That has fueled a campaign to keep religion, and even religious…
The United States Supreme Court ruled Monday that a pro-life law violates the rights of both women and abortion providers in Louisiana. Chief Justice John Roberts sided with liberal members of the court in the close 5-4 ruling. “The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas…
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday in a pair of consolidated cases, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and St. James School v. Biel, that will examine the so-called ministerial exception. That’s a legal doctrine that protects freedom of religion by exempting religious institutions from the application of anti-discrimination laws to employees…
Billions of people around the world exercised their religious freedom during Holy Week, but a new United Nations report threatens to undermine both this freedom and women’s rights. The report of Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N. expert responsible for protecting religious freedom, advances a “progressive” agenda of abortion and new “rights” based on membership in sexual identity groups. It seems…
The annual two-week meeting of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women was supposed to kick off this week, flooding Turtle Bay in Manhattan with feminists and advocates of every stripe. The event draws delegates from around the world and thousands of representatives from nongovernmental organizations to New York each March to discuss issues…
Abolitionists and the pro-life movement share a similar respect for the sacredness of human life. Frederick Douglass "was a strong proponent of the black family" in the mid- to late 1800s, says the Rev. Dean Nelson, a Baptist pastor who is executive director of Human Coalition Action. Nelson joins The Daily Signal Podcast to discuss…
Another abortion case is before the Supreme Court. The high court heard oral arguments Wednesday in June Medical Services v. Russo, involving a Louisiana law requiring that doctors who perform abortions at clinics must have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The Daily Signal’s Rob Bluey breaks down the case with Louisiana Attorney General Jeffrey…
Legislation at the center of an abortion case before the Supreme Court on Wednesday originally was introduced by a black, pro-life, female Democrat in the Louisiana state Senate who says the measure will “make sure women are protected.” Louisiana state Sen. Katrina Jackson in 2014 introduced the Unsafe Abortion Protection Act, or Act 620, which…
This week, the Senate is set to vote on two pro-life bills widely supported by the American public—but that’s not the story radical pro-abortion activists are telling. Both the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act enjoy widespread support with Americans across the political spectrum. But in Congress, where radical…
African American pro-life leaders decry what they call the eugenics mentality of abortion providers perpetuating the high abortion rate among black women and urge promoting crisis pregnancy centers as an anti-abortion outreach to minority communities, as an alternative to Planned Parenthood. The black anti-abortion activists also say the right to life is the civil rights…
A personal connection to their cause drives her daily, Heritage Foundation President Kay C. James told a gathering of young, pro-life Americans in Washington. “When you have been at this for 40 years, you cannot imagine the joy of seeing a crowd this size,” James said Saturday to more than 3,000 attendees, most of them…
Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” As a history major, I study human rights violations like slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Holocaust. Historians usually note that mass conformity and silence are what most drive these crimes against…
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote and catapulted them out of the shadows of dependence into the full sunlight of long-awaited civic freedoms. The right to vote was only the beginning of a long list of goals achieved by the early women’s right…
“Life Empowers: Pro-life Is Pro-Woman” is the theme of this year’s March for Life, set to take place Friday in the nation’s capital. Since 1974, the March for Life has gathered to remember the lives lost since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion, and to remind America that each life has value….
“There’s a lot of hostility to religious beliefs,” says Joe Grogan, director of the Domestic Policy Council at the White House. “These views are protected by the First Amendment and people who are offended by public expressions of faith need to get over it,” he adds. In this exclusive interview at the White House, Grogan…
The meaning of religious freedom came home to me, fittingly enough, by the dawn’s early light, slanting through a dormitory window in China many years ago. I was one of 10 young people spending a summer teaching English as a second language classes at an agricultural college 3,000 miles west of Beijing, in what’s known…
We celebrate Thursday, Jan. 16, as Religious Freedom Day, the anniversary of the passage in 1786 of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Unfortunately, the percentage of Americans who have heard of the law, or the day that commemorates it, is shockingly small. Yet Thomas Jefferson, who authored the statute in the Virginia Legislature, listed…