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,…
The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracyby Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry Excerpt from The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy The chaos of the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, was bewildering for many. The riot was also a riot…
Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy and Other Last Chancesby Catherine Keller As the fires, floods, and droughts of climate change spiral around a planetary pandemic and intensify political precarity, the ancient symbol of apocalypse keeps finding new life. It pulses — quite apart from continuous fundamentalist deployments — across secular news sources (the “Insect Apocalypse,” “the…
The Blessings of Liberty by John Witte Reviewed by Nicholas Wolterstorff In the course of his long and distinguished career as a legal historian, John Witte, Jr. – who holds a named professorship at Emory University and is director of the university’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion – has authored and co-authored…
Protestant Globalism and Human Rightsby Gene Zubovich Excerpt from Before the Religious Right (University of Pennsylvania Press 2022) Before the rise of the Christian Right, American ecumenical Protestants dominated the political landscape of the United States. Ecumenical Protestants, sometimes called “liberal” or “mainline” Protestants, had regular access to the corridors of power. For example, on…
Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers by Charles McCrary The following material is excerpted and lightly adapted from the introduction and eighth chapter of Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers (Chicago 2022). In 2020, legislators in Iowa introduced a bill that would define the phrase “bona fide religious purpose,” from the state’s 1965…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “Harold J. Berman on the Revitalization of Criminal Law and Religion” Peter Wosnik The age we live in can be defined in part by its skepticism: skepticism of our national history, of our traditions, of our institutions. Commentators from various ideological persuasions have bemoaned the collapse of important…
The Changing Terrain of Religious Freedom edited by Heather J. Sharkey and Jeffrey Edward Green An overview by the editors What is religious freedom and how should we understand it? In recent years, scholars have taken impassioned stances in responding to this question. Writing from the perspective of U.S. history, one group of scholars has…
The Religion of Secularism Reexamined by Leigh Eric Schmidt Excerpted from The Church of Saint Thomas Paine: A Religious History of American Secularism America’s most famous infidel orator, Robert Ingersoll, was a paradoxically religious man. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he skewered his natal faith with a sharp wit and a silvery tongue on…
Decolonizing Human Rightsby Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im Review by Firas Masri President Joe Biden and members of his administration have constantly reiterated the position that “human rights will be the center of our foreign policy.” Despite this claim, the Biden administration has failed to hold violators of human rights accountable. The U.S. government continues to support…