Debate: ‘Tire Scraps and Religious Liberty’ at Newseum — A 1 hr debate in video format on the merits and implications of the Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer case at the U.S. Supreme Court with Erik Stanley of Alliance Defending Freedom, Daniel Mach of the American Civil Liberties Union, and moderators Rich Wolf of USA Today, Amy […]
Sexual Orientation Discrimination Prohibited by Title VII: In a decision that will lead to a Supreme Court case, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, holding that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (“Title VII”) protects employees who have been discriminated against on the […]
The Three Myths of Cohabitation: Cohabitation has a notably deleterious impact on children. From the University of Virginia study, this fourth edition of the World Family Map project (an international study that tracks various indicators of family health) includes both some obvious and some surprising outcomes of cohabitation replacing marriage: kids who are born and raised by […]
Why Hundreds of Christian Faculty Members Have Signed a ‘Statement of Confession’: Many Christian faculties and members are signing A Statement of Confession and Commitment as a position of “common concern regarding the current social and political climate in the U.S.” Students and profs can consider the reasons, roles, and effectiveness of such public statements, pro and […]
In Judaism, Holiness Is as Holiness Does: The fire at the core of Leviticus — Students may find interesting Rabbi David Wolpe’s observations about Leviticus and Lutheran theologian Rudolph Otto on the numinous and the human condition. Leviticus would seem to lend itself to Otto’s approach. Not a rational or utilitarian pursuit, sacrifice required acknowledgment of […]
The Pearl of Great Wisdom: The Deep & Abiding Biblical Roots of Western Liberal Education — The rich tradition of liberal learning in the West has in fact remained at the most fundamental levels more biblical than classical. From the fountain of biblical study flowed not only a high order of widely applicable interpretative skills ( techné), […]
Parsonage and Prophecy: The Reformation opened up new doors for women—and closed many others. Women’s roles in the church shifted, subtly but certainly, as Katherine von Bora Luther’s had done—away from the church itself and into the home. It was the management of the clerical household, not the theological defense of clerical marriage and an egalitarian […]
Pastor’s Suit Dismissed Under Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine: The Michigan Court of Appeals applied the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine to dismiss a suit brought by a Lutheran pastor challenging actions that forced his resignation from St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church. He claims this led to his “blacklisting” in the church and his inability to practice his profession. The court […]
Mind, Matter And Materialism: If mind rests on matter, this must include admitting just how murky our understanding of matter is at the deepest levels. Our job in thinking about the world is to distinguish what science has actually found out about the world from the metaphysical commitments for which the findings of science are often mistaken. We […]
Cracking the Gender Code: Douglas Farrow at McGill University has been developing some concise discussions on the gender identity language and perspectives. Students can assess his efforts in this article and in a piece at First Things titled The Right to Be Yourself.
