Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “So Help Him God?:The Case of the Prayerful Juror” Matthew P. Cavedon Mother Teresa said that “listening is the beginning of prayer.” One Florida juror listened in prayer and heard the Holy Spirit telling him to vote not guilty. So he did. Did he violate his oath to…
Photo by Varun Yadav on Unsplash This article is part of our “Law, Religion, and the Constitutionalism” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Each year the United States Supreme Court produces a new batch of cases construing the religion clauses of the first amendment. There is something stylized…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 Two Tracks for Twelve Steps: Rehabilitation and Religious Liberty in Criminal Sentencing Matthew P. Cavedon Right before Christmas 2019, a Canadian man won a settlement after his bosses made him attend Alcoholics Anonymous. Why? The man is an atheist, while the world-famous recovery program’s twelve steps require participants…
Image by Tom from Pixabay The recent Supreme Court decision in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and St. James School v. Biel (‘Morrissey-Berru’) has prompted a great deal of debate about the space made for freedom of religion or belief in anti-discrimination or equality legislation. The relevant space typically takes the form of an…
Photo by Eric Yeich from Pexels In defense of his direct-action campaign and breaking of Jim Crow laws, Martin Luther King, Jr. cited Saint Thomas Aquinas’s proposition that “an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.” In the same way that King and his fellow fighters in…
Photo by Polina Zimmerman from Pexels COVID-19 presents colleges with precisely the kind of problem that those of us in the liberal arts claim that we are preparing people to address in responsible ways. The pandemic confronts us with what academics call an unstructured problem: one that has many layers and for which there is…
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay I live in Los Angeles, California, near what seems to me to be one of the most dangerous intersections in South LA, Vermont and Gage. On any given day, the intersection looks like any other intersection in the city. But to live in this area is to know, there are…
Photo by Nicole Baster on Unsplash In an interview with Krista Tippet’s theology podcast On Being, prominent civil rights activist and public theologian Ruby Sales considers the role of Black Christianity and Black folk religion in her community organizing. Despite being reared in the Black Baptist tradition, Sales explains that she “lost her religion” during…
Photo of Supreme Court in Washington, D.C (Creative Commons/Public Domain) The Supreme Court delivered a precedent-setting decision on June 30, 2020, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. The facts and holding of this case have already been addressed in the Canopy Forum, so I will only summarize them here. Then, following a brief discussion of…
Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash Many Americans gleam over Uncle Sam’s “wall of separation” between church and state. That this wall should be thick and tall perhaps became even more evident after President Trump posed weeks ago with a Bible minutes after having the National Guard use tear gas to expel peaceful protestors for…