Pope Francis speaking at the Presidential Palace in Baghdad, March 5th, 2021 [Wikimedia Commons] Any way you look at it, Pope Francis’ March trip to Iraq had the appearances of being rash and even reckless on the surface. This Mideast country has been ravaged by years of war and rocked more recently like the rest of…
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, interprets Vermeule as calling for judges…
“Well, I personally think we should scrap the constitution,” current congressional candidate Michael Sisco proclaimed in December 2020 during an episode of his podcast The Michael Sisco Show. During that same episode, titled “The Republic is a Deception,” Sisco mentioned that he favors a form of Byzantine symphonia “where the church has authority over the…
Offering a cup of tea to a stranger is universally viewed as an act of hospitality. Except if you are a Baha’i in Iran, where this kindness can result in torture, imprisonment, or death, both for the offeror and the recipient. The danger springs from the recent escalation of a government-led propaganda campaign meant to instigate hatred against the Baha’is, whose religion,…
In this volume about the politics of American religion, Shakman Hurd and Sullivan ask readers to consider the differences between “domestic versions of religion and religious freedom” as opposed to “those offered for export” (1). The emphasis on disestablishment and free exercise at home, they write, stands in stark contrast to American projects abroad, where…
The Group of Seven nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States — agreed on June 5, 2021 to promote a new global tax system. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) announced on July 1, 2021 that 130 of the 139 countries comprising the organization’s “Inclusive Framework”…
I. According to their nature, ideas, as purely abstract concepts, are radical intrusions into material existence. They are that which drive us to re-examine and potentially upend our lives on the basis of wholly immaterial considerations. Though there may be both conscious and unconscious gains made for a person’s existence through the implementation of particular…
In this brisk little book, Joshua Mauldin responds to the contemporary crisis of democracy by taking up three related topics: theological criticisms of modernity and democracy, such as those made by Alasdair MacIntyre, Bradley Gregory, and Stanley Hauerwas; the political theologies of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and broadly Hegelian defenses of modernity and democracy,…
This essay was originally read at Columbia University’s IRCPL event on March 17, 2021. In the American Examples project at the University of Alabama, the idea of American religion itself has been up for debate. During a recent discussion, Michael J. Altman, a principal investigator on the project, recounted a question from the previous year’s cohort,…
From his very first line, Joshua Mauldin establishes immediately what is at stake in his new thought-provoking volume Barth, Bonhoeffer, & Modern Politics: “Modern democracy is in crisis.” The modern liberal democratic project does seem to teeter perpetually on a knife’s edge. Critics and prognosticators routinely predict its demise. While there has been no shortage…