Oklahoma City’s Skyline by Oklahoma City Convention and Visitors Bureau (CC BY-SA 3.0). The school choice movement spurred on by Milton Friedman’s highly influential 1955 essay, The Role of Government in Education, affords parents greater opportunities to select where their children can be educated. A key component in this movement are charter schools. Charter schools…
Photo titled “Ghosts, Spooky” from Pixabay (License). As anyone with cable or streaming television in the United States knows, it’s a scary world out there! Talking to dead people, hunting the forests for bigfoots, searching the skies for UFOs—it’s a big paranormal world that’s become big programming and entertainment. Maybe it’s because I recently stayed…
Juniata River in Pennsylvania, United States by Chris Liu-Beers on Unsplash. This article is part of our “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act at Thirty” series. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. The Society of Friends — popularly known as the Quakers — emerged in England in the wake of the Thirty…
Picture by Todd van Hoosear (CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED). In June 2023, the Supreme Court announced two significant First Amendment decisions: 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis and Groff v. DeJoy. In 303 Creative, both the majority and the dissent commented on what a difference time can make. But in both 303 Creative and Groff, I…
Image: “Abbey, Church, Interiors” from Pixabay (License). This article is part of our “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act at Thirty” series. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. It hardly seems imaginable today, but the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which restored strict scrutiny and made it easier for citizens to receive religious…
Picture titled “Church, Religion, Freedom” from Pixabay (License). This article is part of our “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act at Thirty” series. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. I n a democratic multi-religious society, regulating religious freedom is a tricky issue. However, examining the issue from the perspective of a European…
Saint Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Russia by Peter H. on Pixabay. Many Christians celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision in 303 Creative, LLC v. Elenis as a bulwark against coercion. In 303 Creative, the Supreme Court held that a Christian web designer has a First Amendment free speech right to refuse service to couples seeking…
Picture of The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria by James Gordon (CC BY 2.0) This article is part of our “Reassessing Democracy: Contemporary Perspectives” series. If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Since the 9.11 attacks and subsequent Global War on Terror, one of the major fields of study related to…
Image: Church Altar Pews (Pixabay) This article is part of our “Reassessing Democracy: Contemporary Perspectives” series. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. T here is no single Catholic political philosophy. Some intellectuals, like twentieth-century philosopher Heinrich Rommen, have even suggested that “Catholic political philosophy” is a contradiction in terms, given the…
Picture of the Chicago Skyline from Grant Park in by James Conkis (CC BY-SA 4.0). This essay is an introduction to our thematic series, “Reassessing Democracy: Contemporary Christian and Islamic Perspectives.” How do religious communities approach democracy? What religious beliefs, practices, and histories inform those views? And what does democracy look like when viewed through…