Interactions Podcast

Interactions Podcast

The Interactions podcast, a podcast about the interactions between law and religion, is produced by the CSLR and distributed by Canopy Forum. New episodes now available.

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Masking Religious Freedom Violations

Masking Religious Freedom Violations

This symposium explores the complex and multifaceted nature of religious discrimination. Read new essays by various experts here.

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Ongoing Series

Ongoing Series

Our three latest series include essays on Transnational Christian Nationalism, IVF and ART, and a collaboration with the journal, Derecho en Sociedad. Explore our latest series by scholars around the globe.

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“Right Test, Wrong Outcome: Avoiding Misuse of the Ministerial Exception in Faith-Based Schools” by Charles J. Russo & Allan G. Osborne

Photo by George Becker on Pexels During the closing days of its 2019-20 term, the Supreme Court’s trilogy of rulings in the companion cases of Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and St. James School v. Biel, Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania, and Espinoza v. Montana Department

“Life, Liberty, & Vaccines: The Clash between the Coronavirus and Religious Freedom” by Sara Pullen Guercio

Photo by kkolosov on Pixabay This article is part of our “Reflecting on COVID-19” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Like most of us these days, we were sitting on the couch. My husband said grimly, “Let’s see what’s going on in the world…” and turned on the news. The

“Imperial Pieties: Religion, the Sanctification of Whiteness, and the Duplicity of the Sacred” by Joseph Winters

Photo by sk on Pexels The image of Donald Trump wielding a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church, a snapshot that occurred immediately after protestors were penetrated with tear gas and rubber bullets in order to clear space for the President, quickly became a target of controversy. Some critics, including former Defense Secretary James Mattis,

“The Social Gospel in Black and White, Then and Now” by Gary Dorrien

Photo by Nadim Shaikh from Pexels This essay was originally delivered as a speech at the annual dinner of Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries of Greater Boston on June 6, 2020. I am grateful for the invitation of Rodney Petersen and the Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries of Greater Boston to speak at this year’s annual dinner, this year a virtual event in

“Transitional Justice and The Role of Legitimacy in Informal Institutional Change” by Aaron Alfredo Acosta & Nelson Camilo Sánchez

Capitolio Nacional Seat of the Congress. Bogotá, Colombia. 2008. Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 3.0 Transitional Justice in Colombia In the past ten years, under the flag of transitional justice, Colombia has sought to implement a series of measures to confront the legacy of the conflict regarding property and land tenancy. In 2011, the government enacted

“A Protestant Perspective on Privatization and Subsidiarity” by Jordan J. Ballor

“Mount Nebo” by Maya-Anaïs Yataghène / Wikimedia CC BY 2.0 The doctrine of subsidiarity is most closely associated with modern Roman Catholic Social Teaching, particularly as codified in the social encyclicals Quadragesimo Anno (1931) and Centesimus Annus (1991). In the latter document, Pope John Paul II defines subsidiarity as the principle that “a community of

“Great Christian Jurists in German History” by Mathias Schmoeckel and John Witte, Jr.

Great Christian Jurists in German HistoryMathias Schmoeckel and John Witte, Jr. This volume is part of a 50-volume series on “Great Christian Jurists in World History, “presenting the interaction of law and Christianity through the biographies of 1000 legal figures of the past two millennia. Commissioned by the Center for the Study of Law and

“Racist Security” by Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou

Image by Sonny Sixteen from Pexels The racialization of security currently playing out is nothing new. Security has often been racialized and racism has always been securitized. Historically, the incestuous relationship between these two issues has been anchored in a logic of instrumentalization. Definitionally, racism is essentially a threefold dehumanizing construct representing a vision of

“The Right of Self-Defense in Confucianism” by Ping-cheung Lo

Image by cocoColin from Pixabay This article is part of our “Self-Defense and Human Rights” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. This piece contributes to David Little’s claim that the right of self-defense is universally acknowledged by analyzing the subtle idea of self-defense in the book of Mencius,