Pope Francis speaking at the Presidential Palace in Baghdad, March 5th, 2021 [Wikimedia Commons] Any way you look at it, Pope Francis’ March trip to Iraq had the appearances of being rash and even reckless on the surface. This Mideast country has been ravaged by years of war and rocked more recently like the rest of…
When Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule published his article “Beyond Originalism” in The Atlantic last year, his critics saw it as a moment of revelation. The legal right, after decades of hiding behind the mask of proceduralism, had finally reared its true, authoritarian face. Criticism of the article, however, interprets Vermeule as calling for judges…
“Well, I personally think we should scrap the constitution,” current congressional candidate Michael Sisco proclaimed in December 2020 during an episode of his podcast The Michael Sisco Show. During that same episode, titled “The Republic is a Deception,” Sisco mentioned that he favors a form of Byzantine symphonia “where the church has authority over the…
Offering a cup of tea to a stranger is universally viewed as an act of hospitality. Except if you are a Baha’i in Iran, where this kindness can result in torture, imprisonment, or death, both for the offeror and the recipient. The danger springs from the recent escalation of a government-led propaganda campaign meant to instigate hatred against the Baha’is, whose religion,…
Recently, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) passed a new ruling on the Muslim headscarf. That headscarves cause debate shouldn’t be a surprise. Four years ago, the CJEU dealt with the very same issue: private employers asking Muslim women to remove their headscarves and Muslim women claiming the violation of Directive 2000/78 EC,…
In this volume about the politics of American religion, Shakman Hurd and Sullivan ask readers to consider the differences between “domestic versions of religion and religious freedom” as opposed to “those offered for export” (1). The emphasis on disestablishment and free exercise at home, they write, stands in stark contrast to American projects abroad, where…
Could Cohabitation Rights Solve the Issue of Unregistered Religious Marriages? A Contextualizing and Summary of Religion and Marriage Law: The Need for Reform Russell Sandberg In my new book, Religion and Marriage Law: The Need for Reform, I argue that the law relating to marriage in England and Wales is outdated and leads to unfairness.…
The Group of Seven nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States — agreed on June 5, 2021 to promote a new global tax system. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) announced on July 1, 2021 that 130 of the 139 countries comprising the organization’s “Inclusive Framework”…
Moses, Jesus, and Einstein and Those Who Hate Them A Contextualizing and Summary of Mordecai Would Not Bow Down: Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Christian Supersessionism Timothy P. Jackson Moses and Albert Einstein embodied a singular Judaic genius. Both men pointed out the intimate connection between realities typically considered separate if not adversarial, with Einstein doing…
I. According to their nature, ideas, as purely abstract concepts, are radical intrusions into material existence. They are that which drive us to re-examine and potentially upend our lives on the basis of wholly immaterial considerations. Though there may be both conscious and unconscious gains made for a person’s existence through the implementation of particular…