Miquel Barceló’s ceiling at the UN headquarters in Geneva. United States Mission Geneva / CC BY-ND 2.0 This article is part of our “Natural Law, Human Rights, and ‘Unalienable Rights” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. The Commission on Unalienable Rights has already generated significant criticism, much of it…
Image retrieved from Pixy (CC0). This article is part of our “Natural Law, Human Rights, and ‘Unalienable Rights” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Attempts by the United States State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights to identify a subset of proper “unalienable rights” within the broader category of human…
Daughters of Charity holy card. 1896. University of Dayton Libraries / Wikimedia Commons. My mother spent 25 years working for a Catholic hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. When she was hired in 1984, Catholic faith was a requirement for management, and nuns roamed the halls. For every five years of service, she received a new metal…
Photo by stokpic on Pixabay (CCO) This fall I taught a graduate seminar on the history of religion in the United States. I have long been committed to transparency as the centerpiece of my pedagogy, which means that I take students behind the scenes of the historical profession and show them how the ideas they…
Red and black abstract photo/ Tobias Aeppli / Pexels Autonomy and dignity are standard grounds for arguments supporting the legalization of assisted suicide. The prima facie case is excellent: forbidding suicide limits human autonomy, and compelling people to live against their will diminishes their self-determination and therefore their dignity. Counter-arguments often rest on assertions about…
Cover image: “Baptistry” by patentboy is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 . What is the position of an individual who, having transitioned from one gender to another, seeks baptism within the Church of England? The sacramental nature of baptism is described in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and the requirements associated with the baptism itself in the Canons of the Church…
Director Vlada Knowlton sat down with the Emory University community to talk about her recent film The Most Dangerous Year. You can watch the trailer for the film above and explore video excerpts from the Q&A below. Gender is a matter of perennial concern in legal and religious spheres, and its implications are often profound: a…
Photo by stevepb on Pixabay (CCO) For Dr. Will Cooke, an evangelical Christian physician in rural Indiana, the Sermon on the Mount motivates him to care for his poor and often addicted patients, and to raise his voice to advocate for better access to treatment and medicines. “Just praying for the sick or yielding the responsibility…
Cover Image: U.S. Congressman Mike Pompeo in 2011. Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia CC BY-SA 3.0 On May 30, 2019, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards—the only Democratic governor of a deep-south state—signed into law a “heartbeat bill” banning abortion after six weeks. In defending his decision, which contravenes the national Democratic Party’s platform plank on securing reproductive health and…
Bladensburg World War I Memorial. Bladensburg, Maryland. Flickr. CC BY 2.0. In its recent decision in American Legion v. American Humanist Association, the Supreme Court has once again drawn conclusions grounded in a faulty reading of history. Ruling 7-2 that a 40-foot cross located along a highway in Bladensburg, Maryland does not violate First Amendment…