This article is part of our “Law and Religion Under Pressure: A One-Year Pandemic Retrospective” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Guy Montag comes home from work each day to greet his wife. The two unfortunately share no intimate connection with each other, nor any Biblical foundation in their…
The millstone was an integral tool needed to grind grain to make bread and sustain life, and during Biblical times, it was deemed that taking someone’s millstone would be like taking his or her life in pledge. It has been analogized as an instrument of death, a wrath of severe judgment, and/or heavy burden. For…
This article is part of our “Chaos at the Capitol: Law and Religion Perspectives on Democracy’s Dark Day” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. A giant flag demanding “Make America Godly Again,” flanked by a Rambo-image of President Trump with a machine gun. A crowd peppered with flags and T-Shirts proclaiming…
On October 28, 2017, a post appeared on 4chan, an anonymous online message board, alleging Hillary Clinton’s imminent arrest and a subsequent violent national uprising. The poster, whose username was simply the letter “Q,” claimed to be a high-ranking government intelligence officer with access to classified information. Hillary Clinton was not arrested and no subsequent…
Introduction This short posting on what the Jewish tradition has to say about Thanksgiving will strike some as surprising — so a word of background might be helpful. Traditional Jews do not celebrate holidays of another religion and have always shied away from even nominally secular holidays that are really about another religion, such as…
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 and resurrection had…
A virtual conference organized in partnership with Brigham Young University Law School, Emory University Law School, Notre Dame Law School, St. John’s University School of Law, and the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. View the full video and browse all essays here. Section D. Religious Organizations (Mark Movsesian, moderator) “‘Churches’ in a Time…
A virtual conference organized in partnership with Brigham Young University Law School, Emory University Law School, Notre Dame Law School, St. John’s University School of Law, and the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. View the full video and browse all essays here. Section E. Theological Implications/Reflections (Stephanie Barclay, moderator) “The COVID Crisis as…
A virtual conference organized in partnership with Brigham Young University Law School, Emory University Law School, Notre Dame Law School, St. John’s University School of Law, and the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. View the full video and browse all essays here. Section E. Theological Implications/Reflections (Stephanie Barclay, moderator) “Christian Public Engagement in…
I have taught the book of Jonah for years, and I used to be very pleased with my reading of it. I taught my students that the author was using the characters of God and Jonah to prescribe a new concept of relating to others. In the story, Jonah — who I saw as a…