Photo by Sajjad Ahmad on Unsplash. 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…
Photo by Ebi Zandi on Unsplash. Recently, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) passed a new ruling on the Muslim headscarf. That headscarves cause debate shouldn’t be a surprise. Four years ago, the CJEU dealt with the very same issue: private employers asking Muslim women to remove their headscarves and Muslim women claiming…
Photo by Alex Vasey on Unsplash. This article is part of our “At Home and Abroad” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. 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”…
Moses, Jesus, and Einstein and Those Who Hate Them A Contextualizing and Summary of Mordecai Would Not Bow Down: Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Christian Supersessionism Timothy P. Jackson Moses and Albert Einstein embodied a singular Judaic genius. Both men pointed out the intimate connection between realities typically considered separate if not adversarial, with Einstein doing…
Photo by Jake Ingle on Unsplash. This article is part of our “At Home and Abroad” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Every now and then, social media resurfaces a meme I’ve come to think of as the “American Jesus” post. A screenshot from a conversation on Facebook, the…
Photo by Prisilla Du Preez on Unsplash. Identifying proper boundaries for religious liberty in American public life continues to be a hot-button issue. Stories of friction between religious groups and other members of society have pervaded the headlines, and such conflicts aren’t going away anytime soon. Over the last few years, the Supreme Court has…
Photo by Robert Tudor on Unsplash. This article is part of our “At Home and Abroad” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan open their edited volume At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion (Columbia University Press, 2020) with an epigraph:…
Photo by David Monje on Unsplash. Religious traditions that are not historically rooted in the Christo-European culture face particular legal and political challenges that are unprecedented in the post-World War II-era. Despite the establishment of supranational bodies responsible for the promotion of human rights standards and the advancement of civil liberties, liberal democracies have failed…
Interior of a Gothic Cathedral by Paul Vredeman De Vries, 1612. From the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This article is part of our “Religious Corporations and the Law” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. This article is in response to Edward David’s recent article in Canopy. From…
Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash. This article is part of our “Religious Corporations and the Law” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. What is a religious corporation? After a number of high profile U.S. Supreme Court decisions over the past decade, this question has assumed great significance as…