Top 10 Church-State, Religious Liberty Developments of 2009

I will be indulging in the usual end-of-the-year and end-of-the-decade "top" lists, but I'm trying to keep them to the relevant or unusual. Here's a bit of the list put together by Howard Friedman of the indispensable Religion Clause blog:

1. U.S. Catholic bishops are at increasing odds with President Obama over abortion. Very public disputes, sometimes splitting the Catholic community, erupted over Notre Dame's award of an honorary degree to Obama and over the USCCB's insistence on strict language in health care reform bills to limit abortion coverage.

2. Conservative Christian groups mount extensive but unsuccessful attempt to prevent passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

3. The Freedom From Religion Foundation becomes a major player in pressing for church-state separation by challenging a wide variety of practices, from sectarian prayers at city council meetings, to the tax code's parsonage allowance, to engravings at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center.

4. The Rifqa Bary case requires Florida and Ohio courts to become involved in run-away teenager's claim that her Muslim father threatens her life because of her conversion to Christianity.

Amusingly Predictably, religion journalists' top religion-related story of the year was Obama's Cairo speech.

Really? Apparently, some have mistaken Religion Clause to be a blog opposed to religious freedom. I don't know why they made that jump and I'll just assume it has to be because they didn't bother to check it out. Rest assured, it is a valuable, pro-religion resource to find up-to-date information on religious issues in politics and at the courts.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 11:21 AM

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