Religion in Isla Margarita, Valle del Espíritu Santo by Wilfredor (CC0 1.0). This essay seeks to illustrate the state of religious freedom in Venezuela by analyzing the factors that affect its free exercise. First, it describes the presence of religious communities in the country and their relationship with the government. Second, it reviews the regulatory…
St Francis of Assisi by Philip Fruytiers. From the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp. (PD-US). It is possible to investigate Saint Francis of Assisi’s life (1181-1226) from many different and relevant angles. His biography and the accounts of the way he lived are permeated with remarkable singularities and events: his horizontalized view of non-human…
“Tyre Nichols protest from January 29, 2023 at the Ohio State House in Columbus” by Becker1999 (CC BY 2.0). This article argues that the death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man in Memphis, Tennessee, at the hands of five Black police officers (Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin…
“Amir Kabir University Uprising September 2022” by Darafsh. (CC BY-SA 4.0). How much can a religious-political system control its citizens? The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) legally required the hijab in 1983. Later, in 1996 and 2014, amendments were made to the penal code of Iran, but this law remained in place. According to the…
Magite Historic / Alamy Stock Photo I read a newspaper column many years ago by Garry Wills. He was writing about a priest and three peace activists, morally outraged by the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, who participated in a White House tour. At one point, they abruptly knelt, announced that the War was an…
Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash. Introduction From its establishment in 1928 until the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood developed from a small religious study group into the most influential Islamist movement in the world. After coming to political power in 2012 during Egypt’s brief democratic transition, the group was ousted…
Crimesploitation: Crime, Punishment, and Pleasure on Reality Televisionby Paul Kaplan and Daniel LaChance No reality television program about crime and punishment satisfied a hunger to see inmates as redeemable more than the A&E network’s most watched show, Dog the Bounty Hunter. Over the course of 246 episodes that aired from 2004 to 2012, the show…
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…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “What has Christianity to do with Criminal Law?” Peter Wosnik Released in 2020 by Routledge Press, Christianity and Criminal Law provides a veritable trove of insights into this important area of study. Not only does the work show the historical influence of Christianity on the development of modern…
Today the news broke that Kyle Rittenhouse had been “acquitted on all charges in the shooting deaths of two men and wounding of a third at a Wisconsin protest against racial injustice last year,” as AP put it. I don’t say this glibly: God help us. Rittenhouse, as we would say growing up, was clearly “looking for…