Christianity and Private Lawedited by Robert F. Cochran, Jr. andMichael P. Moreland Review by John Witte, Jr. This volume is one of several new introductions to Christianity and Law commissioned by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. Each volume is an anthology of some twenty chapters written by leading…
Photo from Unsplash When Japan set out to reinvent itself as a modern nation-state in the second half of the 19th century, the new generation of policymakers had to navigate a plethora of foreign concepts as the vocabulary of Western thought was translated into Japanese. While many of these concepts were essentially new philosophical outlooks…
Georgia State Capitol, Atlanta, Georgia. Source: DXR, Wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0. Currently, all eyes are on Georgia as the state prepares for the runoff elections on January 5th, which will determine which party has control of the Senate. While the battles between Jon Ossoff and David Perdue and Raphael G. Warnock and Kelly Loeffler are…
Photo from Pixabay By the 6th century CE, Christianity was a religion of empire that produced significant codices of imperial law, many of which regulated Jewish practice. Even so, however, Christian polemics against Jewish “legalism” and the perceived burden of the Mosaic-Pharisaic law were commonplace. According to foundational Christian writings, Jesus’s death on the cross…
Tax Law, Religion, and Justice: An Exploration of Theological Reflections on TaxationAllen Calhoun An Introduction by Allen Calhoun This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter forthcoming from Routledge/CRC Press in Tax Law, Religion, and Justice: An Exploration of Theological Reflections on Taxation on March 8, 2021, available online here. Why does the institution of taxation occupy…
Law and the Christian Tradition in Scandinavia: The Writings of Great Nordic Jurists edited by Kjell Å Modéer and Helle Vogt This volume is part of a 50-volume series on “Great Christian Jurists in World History,” presenting the interaction of law and Christianity through the biographies of 1000 legal figures of the past two millennia.…
Church Laws and Ecumenism: A New Path for Christian Unity edited by Norman Doe Review by John Witte, Jr. Law is the backbone of Christian ecclesiology and ecumenism. That is the central message of this collection of well-written and well-integrated chapters on church law by scholars of a dozen global Christian churches. And that has…
Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash This article is part of our “Law, Religion, and the Constitutionalism” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. The American Constitution drew on diverse intellectual traditions. Among the influences constitutional scholars and political theorists have identified and studied are English common law and…
The Apostolic Faith Mission on Azusa Street, Los Angeles, CA in 1907 / Wikimedia Most observers (and participants!) do not see much if any connection between Baptists and Pentecostals. Baptists are generally known as cessationists — contending that the miracles in the New Testament and the extraordinary spiritual gifts practiced like glossolalia (speaking in tongues),…
Photo by Sean Valentine on Pexels This article is part of our “Law, Religion, and the Constitutionalism” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. This essay was originally published on June 16, 2020 in Cato Unbound: A Journal of Debate The Liberty Bell is one of the most prominent…