This article is part of our “Kennedy, Carson, and Dobbs: Law and Religion in Pressing Supreme Court Cases” series. If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. In its Carson v. Makin decision, the Supreme Court held that the State of Maine violated the Free Exercise rights of parents who wished…
Natural Rights and the First Amendment Religion ClausesVincent Phillip Muñoz The following is a modified excerpt from Vincent Phillip Muñoz’s 2022 book Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses, available now from University of Chicago Press. It is now no more that toleration is…
body of water under cloudy sky during sunset by Storiès on Unsplash. Conflict and Religion Is religion a conflict dimension in today’s Ethiopia? Does it have an impact on the ongoing armed confrontations in the country? Some observers think so, but I disagree. Ethiopia, the second-most populated country in Africa, with approximately 112 million people,…
Religion: Relevant to Public Policy but Shielded from Critical Discussion?David A. Hollinger This essay draws on my new book, Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular (Princeton University Press, 2022). The United States today confronts a remarkable paradox: an increasingly secular society is saddled with an increasingly religious politics. In…
Religious Rhetoric in US Right-Wing Politics: Donald Trump, Intergroup Threat, and NationalismChiara Migliori This is an excerpt reprinted with permission from Religious Rhetoric in US Right-Wing Politics: Donald Trump, Intergroup Threat, and Nationalism by Chiara Migliori copyright © 2022 Palgrave Macmillan. Six years have elapsed since Donald Trump became the President elect of the United States. Since…
In 1925, on Day 7 of the infamous “Scopes Monkey Trial” (The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes), defense attorney Clarence Darrow interrogated prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan on the witness stand. His purpose was to discredit Bryan’s (and many Protestants’) view that the original author of Genesis understood the six days of creation…
Picture by Jace Grandinetti on Unsplash. Since 2017, the Russian government has attempted to “liquidate” Jehovah’s Witnesses as a religious organization. Branding Jehovah’s Witnesses an “extremist” group akin to a terrorist organization, the Russian government has confiscated the organization’s property. Witnesses have been beaten and jailed. This persecution has been condemned by the European Court…
Statue of Richard Hooker on Exeter Cathedral Close by Rob Brewer (CC BY-SA 2.0) Richard Hooker (1554-1600) is credited — alongside Thomas Cranmer — as the most important theologian of the English Reformation. The six books of his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity issued a defense of the Elizabethan Church of England against more radical Protestants, calling for…
Picture by Wokandapix on Pixabay. This article is part of our “Kennedy, Carson, and Dobbs: Law and Religion in Pressing Supreme Court Cases” series. If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Notwithstanding the fears of the Supreme Court’s critics, who suggest that it intends to eliminate public education by providing…
Picture by Ted Eytan (CC BY-SA 2.0) This article is part of our “Kennedy, Carson, and Dobbs: Law and Religion in Pressing Supreme Court Cases” series. If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Kennedy v. Bremerton was heard by the Supreme Court in 2022. But the case truly began in…