Catholic High School Loses Ministerial Exception Defense In Suit By Former Teacher: This case may serve as an example of how the Hosanna-Tabor Supreme Court Decision is being understood or not understood at the local level. The Monrovia Patch reports that a California state trial court has rejected the ministerial exception defense raised by a Glendora, California […]
Religious Coalitions Take Contrasting Positions As Amici In Transgender Bathroom Case: Broad coalitions of religious groups have, through amicus briefs, now weighed in on opposite sides of the battle over transgender rights and Title IX that will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on March 28 in Gloucester County School Board v. G.G.(SCOTUSblog case page). See links […]
Religions must speak to the faithless, as well as to each other: This brief essay can assist students with considering the current challenges both of religions explaining themselves to each other as well as to a parallel world that has no religious language or concepts.
Communal Living and its Discontents: This first-person and review essay can help introduce students to the utopia movement and includes discussion of Christian communal living. The piece also serves as a reflection on biblical anthropology and human nature. Another piece on Christian communities can be found at GetReligion: The Wall Street Journal explores trends in Christian […]
Christian Women Writers of the Medieval World: Meet the first known dramatist of Christianity, the most famous female exegete of the nature of the Trinity, the author of the earliest known autobiography in English, and three more fascinating contributors to the life and mind of the medieval church. And Joan of Arc is not even mentioned! […]
How the FBI Is Hobbled by Religious Illiteracy: As religion takes an ever-higher profile in America’s national-security concerns, the FBI will play a crucial role in determining how groups are treated. Steven Weitzman, Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses his new book about the history of the FBI […]
In Religious Freedom Debate, 2 American Values Clash: This 7 min. audio clip summarizes the current debate about freedom of religion and nondiscrimination. Students will hear a concise overview that concludes with no resolution, preparing them for further study on how a constitutional democracy can manage and mismanage these and many other rights and values […]
What Kind of Freedom Does a Republic Promise? — Students can consider terms, themes, and biblical congruence and non-congruence in this essay that argues, A righteous republic is based on a certain vision of the common good—and not just any vision, but a vision that draws deeply on prophetic religion. That is what makes it […]
Black Churches Matter: Research Ties Attendance to Positive Outcomes: Several new studies build on past research to continue revealing how faith is associated with positive outcomes for black Americans amid the realities of discrimination and economic, political, and social inequality. In one study of black adults, neither education nor income predicted a sense of optimism—a hopeful attitude […]
A Film Editor In The Land Of Astrophysicists: Continental drift, worlds in collision, and microbes too small to see–all ideas rejected by science in earlier times. But this case study offers students some discussion on why and how science engages with some hypotheses and not others, and why this is both not-so-good and good.
