Artificial General Intelligence Illustration by David S. Soriano (CC BY-SA 4.0). The capacity to spread misinformation, manipulate people, and persuade them to believe or act in a certain way has been one of the main preoccupations that led to calls for stopping the development of artificial intelligence. The use of social networks to recruit religious…
Via Vyacheslav Argenberg on Flickr The tenth anniversary of a papal election is an important milestone. This is especially so in the case of Pope Francis, who was elected on March 13, 2013 in extraordinary circumstances after the resignation of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who had been in office for less than eight years. Of…
Cloisters of Norwich Cathedral by Arjen Bax (CC BY-SA 2.0). Introduction: Easter with the Easterns? The Christmas season hadn’t even begun when Pope Francis announced a potential change to future Easters: if Eastern Christians unite around a single date for celebrating the holiday, he said, Catholics will adjust their calendars accordingly. This might be mistaken…
The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost VisionErika Bachiochi This excerpt is from the first chapter of The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision and was published by the University of Notre Dame Press (2021). In 1785, John Adams, his wife, Abigail, and their two eldest children departed from his diplomatic post in Paris…
Effective Altruism and Religion: Synergies, Tensions, Dialogue Dominic Roser and Stefan Riedener The following is a modified version of the introduction to Effective Altruism and Religion: Synergies, Tensions, Dialogue, an open-access volume published and available at the Nomos eLibrary here. 1. Effective Altruism and Religion: An Intriguing Encounter The effective altruism (EA) movement matters. In…
Statue of Richard Hooker on Exeter Cathedral Close by Rob Brewer (CC BY-SA 2.0) Richard Hooker (1554-1600) is credited — alongside Thomas Cranmer — as the most important theologian of the English Reformation. The six books of his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity issued a defense of the Elizabethan Church of England against more radical Protestants, calling for…
The Blessings of Liberty by John Witte Reviewed by Nicholas Wolterstorff In the course of his long and distinguished career as a legal historian, John Witte, Jr. – who holds a named professorship at Emory University and is director of the university’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion – has authored and co-authored…
The Religion of Secularism Reexamined by Leigh Eric Schmidt Excerpted from The Church of Saint Thomas Paine: A Religious History of American Secularism America’s most famous infidel orator, Robert Ingersoll, was a paradoxically religious man. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he skewered his natal faith with a sharp wit and a silvery tongue on…
The Business of War: Theological and Ethical Reflections on the Military-Industrial Complex by James W. McCarty, Matthew A. Tapie, and Justin Bronson Barringer The Business of War is the inspiration for and first volume in The Business of Modern Life Series. This series explores the ways that neoliberal global capitalism has infiltrated and come to…
Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash. When Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule published his article “Beyond Originalism” in The Atlantic last year, his critics saw it as a moment of revelation. The legal right, after decades of hiding behind the mask of proceduralism, had finally reared its true, authoritarian face. Criticism of the article, however,…