by At this time of year we hear arguments about how to greet people, in person or on cards and such. Some people find the traditional greeting “Merry Christmas” to be offensive and uncivil– a few years ago, Step Feldman wrote an interesting book with the title Please Don’t Wish Me a Merry Christmas– but others [...]
Read the full postAuthor Archive for stevensmith
I’ve brought up here from time to time an issue that worries me, but that doesn’t worry others much: how serious and threatening is the division between people who adhere to what James Davison Hunter called the “orthodox” position– conservative Christians and devout Jews, mostly– and the adherents of the “progressive” position– secularists, more liberal [...]
Read the full postI just received in the mail Donald Drakeman’s book called “Church, State, and Original Intent” (Cambridge 2010). This is an excellent treatment of its subject. I read it over quickly a couple of months ago when our library got a copy, but I put off buying my own because it was, frankly, pretty expensive. But [...]
Read the full postOn the Mirror of Justice blog, and also on the religiousleftlaw blog, Steve Shiffrin has posted a couple of comments on my book “The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse.” Readers of this blog might be interested. Here are some links: http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/09/secular-discourse-religious-discourse-and-steven-smith.html and http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/09/the-di.html I posted the following response to Steve’s second post: I thank Steve for [...]
Read the full postI have a friend named Bill who doesn’t have much education but who is a bit of a thinker nonetheless. This morning I ran into Bill, and he seemed pretty agitated. “What’s the problem?” I asked. “Well, Professor,” Bill said, “the news this week has got me upset. It seems that because the people don’t want [...]
Read the full post“Have you read Judge Walker’s opinion? Can you explain it to me?” A non-lawyer friend was calling, mid-afternoon, to ask about Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision today invalidating California’s Proposition 8, which had banned same-sex marriage. “No, I haven’t read it,” I said. “I hadn’t even heard that the decision had been announced. But I knew [...]
Read the full postPioneer Day, in case you didn’t know, is today, July 24; it commemorates the day in 1847 (give or take a day or two) when Brigham Young declared “This is the place,” and the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley. I imagine Pioneer Day is still celebrated in Utah, and it was a festive [...]
Read the full postYesterday I did a lunch workshop here at U. San Diego, talking about the school prayer decisions as contributing to the “culture wars.” This is a phenomenon that worries me a lot. I look out and see an increasingly polarized culture– polarized more or less along the lines that James Davison Hunter described some years [...]
Read the full postToday’s Martinez decision has provoked debate about whether Hastings’ “all comers” policy (if that’s what the school’s policy actually was) was “viewpoint neutral.” Five Justices said yes; four Justices said no. On this blog, Bob Cochran agrees with the four. For what it’s worth, so do I. But the difficulty and the confusion arise in [...]
Read the full postI have never done scholarly work on the issue of same-sex marriage, but I occasionally read work on the subject, in part because it intersects in contested ways with the subject of religious freedom, which is an area in which I work. The most common description of what is being sought and resisted, it seems, [...]
Read the full post
