Image by Tatiana from Pixabay This article is part of our “Reflecting on COVID-19” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Amid efforts to reduce, if not eliminate, the spread of COVID-19, researchers are working on a vaccine to prevent future infections. At the same time, given the fears of some…
Image from Pixy This article is part of our “Reflecting on COVID-19” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. The COVID-19 crisis has strained religious institutions, along with the rest of our accustomed social order. In a few cases, it has also provoked the latest drama in the complex encounter between…
Image by Peter H from Pixabay As the United States nears the grim milestone of 150,000 American coronavirus deaths and cases surge in many parts of the country, a number of states are pausing or reversing their reopening plans. Many states are also weighing whether to put back in place the numerical limits on indoor…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “Judge Not: The Problem with Georgia’s Charge about Religious Objection to Jury Service” Matthew P. Cavedon At the start of most criminal trials in Georgia, the judge gives those called for jury duty a quick overview of the jury selection process. This includes warning them that the attorneys…
Photo by kkolosov on Pixabay This article is part of our “Reflecting on COVID-19” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Like most of us these days, we were sitting on the couch. My husband said grimly, “Let’s see what’s going on in the world…” and turned on the news. The…
Image by Pexels from Pixabay “The Blaine Amendment was ‘born of bigotry.”’ Reasonable people can certainly disagree over whether Chief Justice John Roberts’ forceful words in the opinion of the five-to-four judgement in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Taxation, which produced seven different opinions, was the stake through the heart of the anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments…
Photo by michael_schueller on Pixabay Over the last decade, the internet has been abuzz with complaints from white American Christians that they are the victims of a broad secularist and leftist persecution. Stung by the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, bewildered by demographic research demonstrating their new minority status, and ever more desperately aligning their…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “Russian Authorities Sentence Jehovah’s Witness” Adrienne Phillips The Russian Constitution of 1993 states that, “Everyone shall be guaranteed the freedom of conscience, the freedom of religion, including the right to profess individually or together with others any religion or to profess no religion at all, to freely choose,…
Black and Silver Laptop Computer, Jolo Diaz, Pexels Last month, for the first time ever, Twitter fact-checked two presidential tweets. In response, President Donald Trump issued an executive order which would, in essence, eliminate a pillar of U.S. internet law, the protections contained in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230). CDA 230…
Image adapted from Wikicommons by DhLeaks44 / CC BY-SA 4.0 “I Swear to God: Oaths, Accommodations, and the Binding of Conscience” Matthew P. Cavedon Watch any courtroom drama and you know something serious is about to happen when a witness takes an oath. In the typical Hollywood version, it goes like this: “Do you swear to tell the…