“The Social Gospel in Black and White, Then and Now” by Gary Dorrien

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 a time of crisis. The crisis

“Transitional Justice and The Role of Legitimacy in Informal Institutional Change” by Aaron Alfredo Acosta & Nelson Camilo Sánchez

Capitolio Nacional Seat of the Congress. Bogotá, Colombia. 2008. Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 3.0 Transitional Justice in Colombia In the past ten years, under the flag of transitional justice, Colombia has sought to implement a series of measures to confront the legacy of the conflict regarding property and land tenancy. In 2011, the government enacted

“A Protestant Perspective on Privatization and Subsidiarity” by Jordan J. Ballor

“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

“Great Christian Jurists in German History” by Mathias Schmoeckel and John Witte, Jr.

Great Christian Jurists in German HistoryMathias Schmoeckel and John Witte, Jr. 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 and

“Racist Security” by Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou

The racialization of security currently playing out is nothing new. Security has often been racialized and racism has always been securitized. Historically, the incestuous relationship between these two issues has been anchored in a logic of instrumentalization. Definitionally, racism is essentially a threefold dehumanizing construct representing a vision of irreconcilable difference, a belief in human

“Born of Bigotry, Died in Religious Liberty: The Supreme Court Ends the Blaine Amendments in Empowering Parental Choice” by Charles J. Russo & William E. Thro

“The Blaine Amendment was ‘born of bigotry.”’ Reasonable people can certainly disagree over whether Chief Justice John Roberts’ forceful words in the opinion of the five-to-four judgement in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Taxation, which produced seven different opinions, was the stake through the heart of the anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments that brought their jurisprudential reign

“Defund the Border Police: Racial Justice and the American Border” by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

Photo by Fifaliana Joy (Pixabay) Americans looking for a way forward in this national crisis are calling for prioritizing anti-racism, demilitarizing American society, and democratizing the political and legal system. To do so will require understanding which institutions are most in need of reform. My research on the American border suggests that border policy should