Photo of Ludwigsburg, Germany marketplace/ maxmann/ Pixabay/ CCO In his dissent in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, wherein the Supreme Court invalidated student-led prayer prior to the start of high school football games, a dismayed Chief Justice William Rehnquist expressed the sentiment of many Americans, that “[t]he Court … bristles with hostility to…
Photo by Cooper Baumgartner on Unsplash The May 25, 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, despite his multiple cries of, “I can’t breathe,” has compelled me to turn to Black theologian James H. Cone for a personal lesson in rebellion. Having spent over a decade working in the civil rights field, and three…
Photo by Jason Sung on Unsplash Om Hreem Shree Gurubhyo Namah Introduction Swami Vivekananda’s famous speech at the Parliament of World Religions in 1893 introduced Hinduism to the West. As an ambassador of one of the most ancient traditions of the world, he conveyed the essence of the Vedas, the universal acceptance of all traditions: “as…
Photo / James Coleman / Unsplash The coronavirus pandemic has had (and continues to have) worldwide implications. Quite apart from the tragic loss of life and the damage to economies, individuals have faced significant restrictions in their personal lives, which includes, but of course is not limited to, limitations on the extent to which they…
Photo by freddie marriage on Unsplash The French politician Robert Schuman (1886-1963) embodies the most genuine spirit of European reconciliation after the Second World War. One of the founding fathers of the European Union, a convinced Christian Democrat of German education and French heart, he was raised in the contested border area of Alsace-Lorraine and…
Image by Tom from Pixabay The recent Supreme Court decision in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and St. James School v. Biel (‘Morrissey-Berru’) has prompted a great deal of debate about the space made for freedom of religion or belief in anti-discrimination or equality legislation. The relevant space typically takes the form of an…
Proposals for participation in a blog conference on Law, Religion, and Coronavirus in the United States: A Six-Month Assessment, are being accepted until August 31st, 2020. An online webinar open to the public will be held on Friday October 2, 2020, at 11:00 a.m. EDT where brief 3-5 minute summaries of blog posts of approximately…
Photo by Eric Yeich from Pexels In defense of his direct-action campaign and breaking of Jim Crow laws, Martin Luther King, Jr. cited Saint Thomas Aquinas’s proposition that “an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.” In the same way that King and his fellow fighters in…
Photo by Polina Zimmerman from Pexels COVID-19 presents colleges with precisely the kind of problem that those of us in the liberal arts claim that we are preparing people to address in responsible ways. The pandemic confronts us with what academics call an unstructured problem: one that has many layers and for which there is…
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay I live in Los Angeles, California, near what seems to me to be one of the most dangerous intersections in South LA, Vermont and Gage. On any given day, the intersection looks like any other intersection in the city. But to live in this area is to know, there are…