Media and Culture Archives

“National Religious Broadcasters v. Werfel: The Court Should Uphold the Johnson Amendment to Protect Voters’ Right to Know Who Is Spending to Influence Them” by Kevin Hancock

Dec 18, 2025Canopy ForumSeriesDecember 2025, Hancock, Kevin, Media and Culture, Tax Law, US Supreme Court (SCOTUS)

United States Capitol in Washington D.C., by Jarek Tuszyński (CC-BY-SA-3.0 & GDFL). This article is part of our series on Law, Religion, and The Johnson Amendment. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. Few provisions are more vital to preserving both the integrity of religious organizations and democratic transparency than the Johnson…

“Speaking Truth to Power in Challenging Times: Lessons from the Arab Spring Politics of Muslim Jurists” by Muhammad Amasha

Apr 10, 2025Canopy ForumEssaysAmasha, Muhammad, April 2025, Islam, Media and Culture, Religion and State

Image by Bassel Zaki from Pixabay. I spent the last six years studying the politics of intellectuals, broadly understood as people of knowledge. While I mainly focused on some leading Egyptian religious Muslim jurists’ stances on the 2011 Arab Revolutions, I have also observed intellectuals adhering to other traditions at different politically charged moments. As…

“Masked Discrimination Against Vodou and Other African Diaspora Religions” by Danielle Boaz

Dec 20, 2024Canopy ForumSeriesBoaz, Danielle, December 2024, Media and Culture, Religious Freedom

Photo of Ohio, USA by Robert Conklin on Unsplash. This article is part of our virtual symposium and essay series, “Masking Religious Freedom Violations.” Read more here. How does one protect a faith that most people would not even recognize as a religion? How can religious freedom be guaranteed when the public struggles to separate…

“Ghosts of Law and Religion: The Paranormal Fascination and the Bounds of Knowledge and Experience” by M. Christian Green

Nov 10, 2023Canopy ForumEssaysChristianity, Constitutional Law, Green, M. Christian, Media and Culture, November 2023

Photo titled “Ghosts, Spooky” from Pixabay (License). As anyone with cable or streaming television in the United States knows, it’s a scary world out there! Talking to dead people, hunting the forests for bigfoots, searching the skies for UFOs—it’s a big paranormal world that’s become big programming and entertainment. Maybe it’s because I recently stayed…

“Law and Religion in an Age of Rapid Secularization” by Frank Lechner

Jun 29, 2023Canopy ForumEssaysJune 2023, Lechner, Frank, Media and Culture, Religious Freedom

Trinity Church on Broadway and Wall Street, New York City. Photo by TLM1995 (CC BY-SA 4.0). In the relationship between law and religion, one side is in trouble. Historically, their ties were deep and meaningful. In the recent past, they dealt with many contentious issues, though none caused separation or divorce. The legacy of old…

“Internet Ethics, American Law, and Jewish Law: A Comparative Overview” by Dr. Gertrude N. Levine & Samuel J. Levine

Apr 4, 2023Canopy ForumEssaysApril 2023, Gertrude Levine, Judaism, Levine, Samuel J., Media and Culture

The Internet, devised for the purpose of interconnecting diverse computer networks of research and educational communities, has become a global communication system that joins together widely disparate populaces with different ethical codes. The World Wide Web (WWW), hosted by the Internet, serves both to propagate existing ethe and to undermine them. Communities of the WWW, as…

“Together” by Almas Shaikh

Jan 5, 2023Canopy ForumEssaysJanuary 2023, Media and Culture, Religious Freedom, Shaikh, Almas

“Together” Almas Shaikh Medium: Water and Acrylic Colors on a 300 GSM PaperDate: March 2022Artist’s Note: I painted this in early March while awaiting the verdict in the Hijab ban case we had argued before the Karnataka High Court. The court upheld the ban and the same was later challenged in the Supreme Court. This…

“Acarajé, Religious Attire, and Conflict in Brazil” by Danielle Boaz

Dec 12, 2022Canopy ForumSeriesBoaz, Danielle, December 2022, History, Indigenous Religious Traditions, Latin America (Geography), Media and Culture

Baianas de Acarajé / October 18, 2007 / Wikimedia Commons This article is part of our “Clothed in Religion: Law and Religious Attire/Garb” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. The government of Brazil has widely recognized and protected acarajé — a food that originates from Candomblé (an Afro-Brazilian religion), as…

“Bring Back Meatless Fridays” by Matthew P. Cavedon

Nov 9, 2022Canopy ForumEssaysCavedon, Matthew P., Christianity, Media and Culture, November 2022

Picture by Jez Timms on Unsplash. Meatless Fridays were once one of the most visible markers of Catholic identity. For most of the American faithful, they are now observed only in the special liturgical season of Lent. US bishops should impose it as a weekly matter once again. The pastoral hopes that caused them to…

“An Excerpt from ‘Crimesploitation'” by Paul Kaplan and Daniel LaChance

Aug 4, 2022Canopy ForumLiterature HighlightsAugust 2022, Criminal Law, Kaplan, Paul, LaChance, Daniel, Media and Culture

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…