Advanced Introduction to Law and ReligionFrank S. Ravitch This literature highlight is drawn from Advanced Introduction to Law and Religion by Frank S. Ravitch (Edward Elgar 2023). The full book is available here. The following is a short excerpt from my newest book, Advanced Introduction to Law and Religion (Edward Elgar 2023) pages 3-9. This book is…
Introduction As historians of religions, we are interested in myths, history, and creation narratives. The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823) includes all these elements. The Johnson decision illustrates one of the powerful ways in which Christianity has played a hegemonic role within American law and culture at the expense of…
Picture of the US Supreme Court by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash. The newest edition of Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment is supplemented by a powerful new research tool: SCOTUSreligioncases.org. Building a free online database of First Amendment religion cases I first encountered Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment in 2006. Then in its second…
“The End of Conviction and Possible Beginnings for Criminal Law and Religion” Matthew P. Cavedon Conviction began just about a year ago and is now coming to an end. The premise for this series was that the intersection of criminal law and religion is an interesting, crowded place. Historically, religion had, and continues to have,…
Photo by Min An. A selection of our most popular essays over the past year. You can browse all of our content here! “Decisions You Have Never Made Before: Medical Improvisations in a COVID ICU” by AnonymousApril 16, 2020 “Defiant Congregations in a Pandemic: Public Safety Precedes Religious Rights” by Robin Fretwell Wilson, Brian A. Smith, and…
Proposals for participation in a blog conference on Law, Religion, and Coronavirus in the United States: A Six-Month Assessment, are being accepted until August 31st, 2020. An online webinar open to the public will be held on Friday October 2, 2020, at 11:00 a.m. EDT where brief 3-5 minute summaries of blog posts of approximately…
This fall I taught a graduate seminar on the history of religion in the United States. I have long been committed to transparency as the centerpiece of my pedagogy, which means that I take students behind the scenes of the historical profession and show them how the ideas they encounter in neatly-packaged articles and books…
Cover Image: Little Rock Nine Memorial. Little Rock, AR. Wikimedia Commons. We have witnessed a curious pattern emerging in many recent confirmation hearings for federal judicial nominees. Beginning first with the Senate confirmation hearings of nominee Wendy Vitter, recently appointed to a federal judgeship in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of…
While often viewed as opposing forces, law and spirituality are deeply connected. In this and other essays in this series, we explore some of the connections between legal and spiritual dimensions of human experience. Here, we note that spirituality can push legal systems to change; indeed, history suggests that legal systems evolve through spiritualization in…
Welcome to Canopy Forum! Law and religion are two of the most complex and pervasive forces in human history. These two “different but interrelated … dimensions of social experience” continue to shape the lives of individuals and communities around the world. The mission of Canopy Forum is to foster deeper understandings of law, religion, and…