Pixabay (License) Natural law and human rights language is directly connected to discussions about human nature. Public rhetoric describing specific communities often shapes our discussions about the way natural law and human rights are applied to those communities. Given the current U.S. presidential administration’s public rhetoric about Latinx and undocumented communities, it is important to…
Pixabay (License) During a speech at the United Nations on September 23, 2019, President Trump stated that “protecting religious freedom is one of my highest priorities.” This claim, however, has some advocates of threatened religious minorities crying foul. They argue that Trump has not made good on his promise, citing his ever-shrinking limit on the…
Parliament of the World’s Religions, Chicago, United States, 1893. Wikimedia. Part three of this series on interfaith dialogue focuses on religious literacy. Religious illiteracy is a widespread phenomenon and can seriously hamper attempts to engage in at least some forms of interfaith dialogue. Notably, this problem is not exclusively one of interfaith illiteracy as many…
Parliament of the World’s Religions, Chicago, United States, 1893 (Wikimedia) (Public Domain). Part two of this three-part series on interfaith dialogue explains several different forms of interfaith dialogue, highlighting some of the benefits and limitations of each, and explores the relevance of religious and interfaith literacy as an important tool for effective interfaith dialogue. [Read Part…
Parliament of the World’s Religions, Chicago, United States, 1893 (Wikimedia) This is the first part of a three-part series exploring some of the methods, possibilities, and skills needed to effectively engage in interfaith dialogue and activity. History of Interfaith Engagement Interfaith engagement is hardly a new phenomenon. The most basic kind of interfaith activity—what is…
(Abbey, Church, Interiors image) (Pixabay) Many members of the United Methodist Church (UMC) woke up to unexpected news earlier this month when it was announced some leaders of the UMC had met in private and negotiated through mediation the terms for a division of the denomination. The UMC, one of the largest Christian denominations in…
—Part III— Parts I and II of this article surveyed the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates’ tax proposals, particularly those (like the wealth tax proposals) that seek to reduce economic inequality, and located those proposals in the history of tax philosophy. This Part III places that largely post-Enlightenment philosophy of taxation in dialogue with the longer…
Image from Pixabay —Part II— Part I of this article surveyed the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates’ tax plans and situated proposals for raising revenue and reducing the wealth gap in broader tax policy concerns. The proposals are revisiting two questions dormant since the early 1980s: (1) how should tax policy balance the dual concerns of…
Image from Pixabay —Part I— Many Christian theologians of the past two thousand years would likely have supported a wealth tax, but not for the reasons given by the current Democratic presidential candidates. Using the tax system to redistribute resources from the wealthy to the poor has been a matter of controversy in American history,…
“Sacred Stone Camp” by Tony Webster / Flickr / CC BY 2.0 The Standing Rock demonstrations, which began in early 2016 and lasted almost a year, have been aptly characterized as the largest Native American activist movement in modern history. More than 300 tribes and scores of water protectors gathered to protest against the construction…