by Today the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. The case, one of many similar cases that have arisen in universities around the country, addresses the question of whether a university, applying its nondiscrimination policies, can decline to recognize a campus religious association that limits its members or officers to students who accept that association’s beliefs and who agree to attempt to live by its moral principles (including, in some cases, refraining from extramarital sex).
Read the full postMonthly Archive for April, 2010
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by Here is an op-ed of mine, which ran this weekend in the Wall Street Journal, in which I offer some thoughts about the religious composition of the Court, how it might have come to be what it is, and whether it matters.
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by This week’s deadline for submitting our federal income tax returns was accompanied by the ritual publication of the returns of the President and the Vice President. As usual, I was interested to see the charitable giving choices of our elected leaders. President Obama gave 5.9% of his earnings to charity, except that number is much higher — 19.6% — when his Nobel Peace Prize is included. (The prize does not constitute income, so the donation is not deductible either). By contrast, Vice President Biden gave just 1.4% of his earnings to charity.
Read the full postAs a Christian, should I be upset that the National Day of Prayer has been struck down?
by robertvischer
This week Judge Barbara Crabb struck down the National Day of Prayer law as a violation of the Establishment Clause. Predictably, some have praised the decision as signaling our long overdue embrace of the Enlightenment, and some have condemned it as one more step on the slippery slope to Constitutionally Mandated Atheist-Land.
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by Earlier this week, the Virginia Supreme Court heard argument in Protestant Episcopal Church v. Truro Church, et. al., one of many church property disputes currently going on in the United States. Here is a report of the Virginia argument. Several northern Virginia congregations (including the historic and very large Falls Church) voted to leave the American Episcopal Church and join an African Anglican diocese (both part of the Anglican communion). The dispute (as in many of the disputes nationwide) was over the denomination’s ordination of actively gay clergy in particular and over biblical authority in general.
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by A few weeks ago, Harvard Law School hosted a conference in honor of Bill Stuntz. I already counted myself among Bill’s many admirers and friends, but my impression that people like Bill don’t come along very often was fully confirmed by this outpouring of respect and admiration from a remarkably diverse and accomplished group of people.
Read the full postA fascinating op-ed, in The New York Times, by the often-fascinating Stanley Fish, “Does Reason Know what it is missing?” Here’s a bit (presenting Habermas): What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its [...]
Read the full postGo here for Scot Powe’s review of Donald Drakeman’s Church, State, and Original Intent (Cambridge). The book is first-rate, in my view. (Full disclosure: I blurbed the book for the press.) After a generally helpful review, Powe concludes, oddly, with a clunky pivot to the observation that “[t]hree years ago, the Supreme Court ignored its [...]
Read the full postMany have noted that Justice Stevens is the last Protestant on the Supreme Court. If Stevens’ law and religion jurisprudence is Protestant jurisprudence, save us from the Protestants (I say this as a Protestant).
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by John’s post about visiting the William Howard Taft National Historic Site got me thinking about our 27th President. Taft was a political conservative but theological liberal, a Unitarian who denied the divinity of Christ. (As far as I know, he was the last President to do so publicly). Although it’s not widely remembered today, Taft’s Unitarianism was an issue in the 1908 campaign. That episode reveals the complicated relationship between religion and Presidential politics.
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