Word: religion
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
People around Neunkirchen, the Saarland coal-mining town where Erich Honecker was born 75 years ago, remember him as a serious-minded boy who passed out political newspapers after school at age ten and shunned religion class as a matter of working-class principle. "He didn't play with us in recess or go swimming in the summer," recalls Kurt Humbs, 76, a classmate in nearby Wiebelskirchen, where Honecker grew up. "Sometimes," he adds, "you had the impression you were looking into a mirror with no glass...
...required to tackle the themes in The Wizard of Oz and The Diary of Anne Frank, among a * host of other books deemed "godless" by a group of parents. And in Alabama, teachers will still be using 44 texts that Fundamentalists had sued to remove for promoting the "religion" of secular humanism...
...required to read and discuss the disputed books, even though parts of those books might conflict with their beliefs. In a suit they brought in 1983, seven Fundamentalist families had contended that exposing their children to such material violated the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. Citing more than 400 objectionable passages, the parents charged that the readings taught such taboo topics as evolution, feminism, situational ethics and belief in the occult...
...damages. In overturning the decision last week, Appellate Judge Pierce Lively wrote that Hull had failed to distinguish between simply reading or talking about other beliefs and being compelled to adopt them. "There was no evidence," Lively declared, "that the conduct required of the students was forbidden by their religion...
...hinged upon a different provision of the First Amendment, the establishment clause, which undergirds church and state separation. In March, Federal Judge W. Brevard Hand ruled that 44 history, social studies and home economics books used throughout the state violated the establishment clause by promoting what he designated a religion, secular humanism. It teaches, he said, "that salvation is through one's self rather than through a deity...