Picture by Kim MacKinnon on Unsplash. Apocalypse: A Short History Apocalypse is, in a short definition, the history of the future leading up to the end of the world. While it is difficult to say precisely when apocalypse as a literary-religious genre first evolved, the form in which most encounter it today was developed during…
Picture by Narcis Ciocan on Pixabay. On December 17, 2021, the U.S. Department of State’s Office of International Religious Freedom issued a joint statement on behalf of the International Religious Freedom and Belief Alliance (IRFBA), condemning the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in several countries, and calling on governments worldwide, inter alia, to release prisoners, end…
Image adapted from The Fabulous Creature Buraq by unknown author and a painting by Nar Singh (Public Domain) A virtual conference sponsored by Canopy Forum and the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory (CSLR) featuring scholars, experts and practitioners who will examine the many religious traditions of South Asia and their diverse…
“Candlelight” from Pixabay (License) Prayer is everywhere. Everyone is disputing prayer, even though the First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Or maybe the problem lies in the wording of the amendment itself. Establishment or free exercise? The Supreme Court has set numerous…
Picture on Pixabay. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated its willingness to intervene on critical questions of legal preparedness and response. Along the way, through two Presidential administrations and major shifts in the Court’s members, it has systematically reshaped core constitutional norms during the deadliest infectious disease crisis the nation has…
Picture of the US Supreme Court by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash. The newest edition of Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment is supplemented by a powerful new research tool: SCOTUSreligioncases.org. Building a free online database of First Amendment religion cases I first encountered Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment in 2006. Then in its second…
Religion and the American Constitutional Experimentby John Witte, Jr., Joel A. Nichols, and Richard W. Garnett Thomas Jefferson once described America’s new religious freedom guarantees as a “fair” and “novel experiment.” These guarantees, set out in the new state and federal constitutions of 1776 to 1791, defied the millennium-old assumptions inherited from Western Europe that…
Photo of Manhattan by wiggijo on Pixabay (CC0) A virtual conference sponsored by Canopy Forum of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory (CSLR) featuring scholars, experts and practitioners on the topic of religious arbitration. View the full video and browse all essays here. “The Role of Lawyers in Rabbinic Arbitration” Chaim…
A Complicated Choice: Making Space for Grief and Healing in the Pro-Choice MovementKatey Zeh Reprinted with permission from A Complicated Choice: Making Space for Grief and Healing in the Pro-Choice Movement by Katey Zeh copyright © 2022 Broadleaf Books. Uncovering the Culture of Shame, Stigma, and Silence around Abortion As I shared in the preface,…
Picture by Rosemary Ketchum on Pexels. The author wishes to thank Timothy Rush and George Lundskow for their helpful input related to this essay. In a series of recent articles in the journal Critical Sociology my colleagues and I explored the hazards of conspiracy theories within contemporary media spaces and political culture. While conspiracy theories…