Photo by Jurga Ka on Unsplash. This article also appears at Mere Orthodoxy. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many deaths and much suffering. It has also created a number of acute challenges for churches, one of which is how to think about religious exemptions to vaccine requirements. These requirements are sometimes imposed by employers, and…
Mordecai Would Not Bow Down: Antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Christian Supersessionismby Timothy Jackson Review by David Blumenthal Books in Protestant constructive theology are not so much expository writing as they are an extended conversation with varied sources on a theological theme. In this book, Timothy Jackson sets forth his theses in a sequence of conversations…
With a 65-page decision, the Joint Section of the Supreme Court (Sezioni Unite della Corte di Cassazione), the highest Italian Court, has ruled on the display of the crucifix in public school classrooms. Issued on September 9, 2021, decision no. 24414/2021 synthesizes an extensive number of precedents, including those of the Italian Constitutional Court and…
Photo by Brad Dodson on Unsplash. One of the most contentious issues in constitutional law is whether governmental action amounts to “an establishment of religion” in violation of the First Amendment. For the past fifty years, the Court has often, but not always, resolved Establishment Clause cases using the three-pronged test established by Lemon v. Kurtzman. Under the…
Photo by Xavier Coiffic on Unsplash. Religion clause jurisprudence is one of the more convoluted areas of constitutional law. The Supreme Court has articulated at least six different standards in recent years for determining whether a state has violated the First Amendment’s prohibition against “establishment of religion.” The Court’s approach to free exercise cases is…
Photo by Janko Ferlic on Unsplash. In the summer of 2021, the French National Assembly and Senate passed the so-called “anti-separatism” bill, signed into law by Emanuel Macron, ostensibly to protect laïcité, the French secularist doctrine designed to ensure government neutrality toward religion. The new law increases scrutiny by the government of religious associations, bars…
Photo by Rachel Moore on Unsplash. What does it mean to call a law generally applicable? The question is timely because of a confluence between the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision this summer in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia and ongoing litigation over COVID-19 prevention measures, especially vaccination mandates. In Fulton, the Court gestured toward two…
Photo by Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash. This is Part II of Laura Ford’s essay on Social Identity Pietism and the First Amendment Balance. The First Amendment Balance & Social Peace In a careful historical study of American cultural and jurisprudential developments relating to First Amendment religious freedom, Philip Hamburger has persuasively argued that the U.S.…
Photo by Marko Beljan on Unsplash. Over the last three decades of work in the fields of law, religion, and human rights, I have been privileged to work with fellow scholars with a range of views on what is known in the United States as “religious freedom.” In my work with scholars outside the U.S.,…
Photo by Darya Tryfanava on Unsplash. This is the final remnant of the Christianity of their ancestors, the last enduring bit of their inheritance: a social gospel, without the gospel. – Joseph Bottum, An Anxious Age (2014) The law commands and requires us to do certain things. The law is thus directed to our behavior and…