Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash. This article is part of our “What’s Wrong with Rights?” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. First of all, let me thank David Little, Jennifer Herdt, John Milbank, Joel Harrison, Hans-Martien ten Napel, and Mark Hill for taking the time and trouble to comment on my…
Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash. This article is part of our “What’s Wrong with Rights?” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. First of all, let me thank David Little, Jennifer Herdt, John Milbank, Joel Harrison, Hans-Martien ten Napel, and Mark Hill for taking the time and trouble to…
Religiously Based Ethical Arguments Favoring Estate Taxes Susan Pace Hamill The federal estate tax imposes a tax on the wealth that individuals leave their heirs. This tax only applies to the very richest — well under half a percent — of all persons in the United States. Generous exemptions allow millions to be inherited without…
Image by Romy from Pixabay. This article is part of our “Law and Religion Under Pressure: A One-Year Pandemic Retrospective” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. “Even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten.” — Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 141 S. Ct.…
Human Struggle: Christian and Muslim PerspectivesMona Siddiqui In this section from chapter two of Human Struggle: Christian and Muslim Perspectives, Professor Siddiqui compares how Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and Rainer Maria Rilke wrote ‘letters’ to a younger student in which both men express their intellectual restlessness and search for faith, meaning and salvation. Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali…
Photo by rolf neumann on Unsplash. The study of religion has a long history of service to Western imperial ambitions. Recent decades have seen religious scholars wrestle with the implications of this colonial legacy for the future of the field. This essay, divided into two parts, will explore the connections between religion and colonialism. First,…
US Center Chapel, located at the Geographic Center of the Lower 48 States in Lebanon, Kansas. From Jimmy Emerson, DVM (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). During the Super Bowl, Jeep ran an ad that featured singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen in a chapel. Not at a political rally, not at a demonstration, but in a tiny chapel in the…
Photo by David Beale on Unsplash. No one has heard a peep from this chorister in nearly a year. Trained in law, religion, and the law of religious freedom, there was a time early in the pandemic when I wondered whether the social distancing mandates being adopted by state and, in some cases, municipal governments…
Photo by Trnava University on Unsplash. Three weeks ago, in the case of South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, the United States Supreme Court stayed the enforcement of California’s occupancy limits on worship services during the pandemic. At some level, there is nothing new here, as the Court had done the same in a…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “‘A Noble Alchemy’: Benefit of Clergy and the Early History of Leniency” Matthew P. Cavedon Criminal justice reform efforts have recently focused on the consequences of having a record. There is a growing sense that society needs to show mercy to those who pay the consequences for doing…