The Interactions podcast, a podcast about the interactions between law and religion, is produced by the CSLR and distributed by Canopy Forum. New episodes now available.
Canopy Forum will be hosting a webinar on law, religion, and immigration on October 28th from 2pm to 3:30pm EST.
Our latest series include essays from the Australian Journal of Law and Religion, and topics ranging from Masking Religious Violations, Transnational Christian Nationalism, to IVF and ART, and more by scholars around the globe.
AI image made by the author to demonstrate Aldous Huxley‘s writing. “Mysticism” – the experience of union with ultimate reality – is often described as a summum bonum of human religious experience, and a central feature of the psychedelic experience. Indeed, in describing psychedelic experiences, “mystical experience” is one of the most frequent terms…
United States Department of Defense Building (US-PD). The executive order of President Trump to turn the Department of Defense into the Department of War is profoundly ominous. Especially when combined with the president’s desire to eliminate the United States Institute of Peace, thereby discouraging a search for alternatives to war, and to portray the U.S. military as “ruthless,” as both he and…
A Church Interior by Pieter Neefs the Elder (PD-US). I wrote this essay following the mass shooting at Minneapolis’s Annunciation Catholic School. Demonization of entire groups has only intensified since then—toward Blacks in the wake of the public-transit stabbing of Iryna Zarutska, and toward transgender people and leftists after the Charlie Kirk assassination. I believe…
Blue Mosque, Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan by Françoise Foliot (CC BY-SA 4.0). The right of women to participate in communal prayers is explicitly affirmed and encouraged within Islamic sources, particularly the Prophetic traditions. Historically, women actively participated in congregational prayers alongside the Prophet and his Companions, praying collectively under the same roof. Across the Sunni legal schools,…
Locke: The Slave Trader and the British Slave TradeGeorge Walters-Sleyon This essay is an adapted excerpt from the fourth chapter of George Walters-Sleyon’s book, The Rush for Black Diamonds, Volume One: From John Locke to Thomas Jefferson—The Transatlantic Slave Trade to Chattel Slavery in the UK and the US (Cascade Books, 2024). Used by permission of Wipf…
An Empowering Civic Education through Law LearningAriel Liberman The following is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Ariel Liberman’s new book, Law as Civic Education: Reimagining a K-12 Curriculum for Democratic Citizenship and Individual Character (Copyright 2025 by Imprint). Reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group. At first blush, the notion of teaching something…
Church of St. John at Kaneo, Ohrid by Kallerna (CC BY-SA 4.0). The perception that Christianity is under attack has long animated American political culture. Conservative American Christians even claim that Christians are the most persecuted religious group worldwide. Vice President J.D. Vance recently tweeted that, “All over the world, Christians are the most persecuted…
This image is an AI-generated depiction based on descriptions of similar events. The recent renewed public outrage over a video showing the brutal execution of Bano Bibi and her alleged partner, Ehsan Ullah, has once again brought the issue of honor killings to the forefront. These murders, which were ordered in May 2025 by a…
Italian Chamber of Deputies in Palazzo Montecitorio, Rome, Italy by Palazzo del Quirinale (PD-ItalyGov) This paper summarizes and translates into English the article, Democrazia e religioni oltre il concordato e le intese: verso una declinazione partecipativa nei rapporti tra Stato e confessioni religiose?, published in the Italian Law & Religion Journal, Stato, Chiese e pluralismo…
Reading the Bible by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (US-PD). During the Protestant Reformation, the Herborn Academy was a Calvinist Reformed institution located in German territory, which was therefore Lutheran. It operated from 1584 until 1817. Herborn was the cradle of covenant theology, also known as federal theology. Due to its adherence to Calvinism, it was never officially…