Photo of Ludwigsburg, Germany marketplace/ maxmann/ Pixabay/ CCO In his dissent in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, wherein the Supreme Court invalidated student-led prayer prior to the start of high school football games, a dismayed Chief Justice William Rehnquist expressed the sentiment of many Americans, that “[t]he Court … bristles with hostility to…
“Character Formation, Ethical Education, and the Communication of Values in Late Modern Pluralistic Societies” by Michael Welker and John Witte, Jr. Five hundred years ago, Protestant reformer Martin Luther argued that “three estates” (drei Stände) lie at the foundation of a just and orderly society — marital families, religious communities, and political authorities. Parents in…
Photo by freddie marriage on Unsplash The French politician Robert Schuman (1886-1963) embodies the most genuine spirit of European reconciliation after the Second World War. One of the founding fathers of the European Union, a convinced Christian Democrat of German education and French heart, he was raised in the contested border area of Alsace-Lorraine and…
The Revolution in Freedoms of Press and Speech:From Blackstone to the First Amendment and Fox’s Libel ActWendell Bird This article is adapted from the introduction of the author’s new book: The Revolution in Freedoms of Press and Speech: From Blackstone to the First Amendment (Oxford University Press, 2020). The conventional view of the history of…
Great Christian Jurists in English History edited by Mark Hill QC and Richard H. Helmholz This volume is part of a fifty-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. Commissioned by the Center for the…
The Medieval Luther edited by Christine Helmer Staging a conversation among distinguished Luther scholars, historians of Christianity, and philosophers, The Medieval Luther makes the case that it is impossible to understand Luther’s most important doctrines without exploring his philosophical inheritance. After all, Luther was an ardent participant in and contributor to the philosophical disputes of…
Great Christian Jurists in Spanish History edited byRafael Domingo and Javier Martínez-Torrón 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. Commissioned by the Center for the Study of Law…
Photo by sk on Pexels The image of Donald Trump wielding a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church, a snapshot that occurred immediately after protestors were penetrated with tear gas and rubber bullets in order to clear space for the President, quickly became a target of controversy. Some critics, including former Defense Secretary James Mattis,…
Photo by Nadim Shaikh from Pexels This essay was originally delivered as a speech at the annual dinner of Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries of Greater Boston on June 6, 2020. I am grateful for the invitation of Rodney Petersen and the Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries of Greater Boston to speak at this year’s annual dinner, this year a virtual event in…
“Mount Nebo” by Maya-Anaïs Yataghène / Wikimedia CC BY 2.0 The doctrine of subsidiarity is most closely associated with modern Roman Catholic Social Teaching, particularly as codified in the social encyclicals Quadragesimo Anno (1931) and Centesimus Annus (1991). In the latter document, Pope John Paul II defines subsidiarity as the principle that “a community of…