Picture on Pixabay. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated its willingness to intervene on critical questions of legal preparedness and response. Along the way, through two Presidential administrations and major shifts in the Court’s members, it has systematically reshaped core constitutional norms during the deadliest infectious disease crisis the nation has…
A Complicated Choice: Making Space for Grief and Healing in the Pro-Choice MovementKatey Zeh Reprinted with permission from A Complicated Choice: Making Space for Grief and Healing in the Pro-Choice Movement by Katey Zeh copyright © 2022 Broadleaf Books. Uncovering the Culture of Shame, Stigma, and Silence around Abortion As I shared in the preface,…
Picture by Rosemary Ketchum on Pexels. The author wishes to thank Timothy Rush and George Lundskow for their helpful input related to this essay. In a series of recent articles in the journal Critical Sociology my colleagues and I explored the hazards of conspiracy theories within contemporary media spaces and political culture. While conspiracy theories…
The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracyby Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry Excerpt from The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy The chaos of the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, was bewildering for many. The riot was also a riot…
Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy and Other Last Chancesby Catherine Keller As the fires, floods, and droughts of climate change spiral around a planetary pandemic and intensify political precarity, the ancient symbol of apocalypse keeps finding new life. It pulses — quite apart from continuous fundamentalist deployments — across secular news sources (the “Insect Apocalypse,” “the…
Protestant Globalism and Human Rightsby Gene Zubovich Excerpt from Before the Religious Right (University of Pennsylvania Press 2022) Before the rise of the Christian Right, American ecumenical Protestants dominated the political landscape of the United States. Ecumenical Protestants, sometimes called “liberal” or “mainline” Protestants, had regular access to the corridors of power. For example, on…
This article is part of our “Russia/Ukraine: Law and Religion Perspectives” series. If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation has cited several issues motivating his invasion of Ukraine. These include the encroachment of NATO upon Russia, Ukraine as an indivisible part of…
Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers by Charles McCrary The following material is excerpted and lightly adapted from the introduction and eighth chapter of Sincerely Held: American Secularism and Its Believers (Chicago 2022). In 2020, legislators in Iowa introduced a bill that would define the phrase “bona fide religious purpose,” from the state’s 1965…
Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash. Last December, U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced the Combating International Islamophobia Act. The bill creates a new position – a Special Envoy – within the U.S. State Department. The envoy would monitor Islamophobia globally. While the House passed companion legislation around…
Photo of Manhattan by wiggijo on Pixabay (CC0) A virtual conference sponsored by Canopy Forum of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory (CSLR) featuring scholars, experts and practitioners on the topic of religious arbitration. View the full video and browse all essays here. “The Danger of “Anti-Sharia” Legislation to Religious Arbitration…