New Directions in the Study of Prayer grantee Peter Manseau observes that both the Obama and Romney campaigns describe religious…
church and state
Three cheers for God
A Texas judge has ruled on the case of the Texas cheerleaders who were using banners with Christian Bible verses…
Religion and the Political Imagination
Religion and the Political Imagination is a volume, edited by Ira Katznelson and Gareth Stedman Jones, that brings together a…
The view from Berlin: An interview with Hubert Knoblauch
Hubert Knoblauch is a professor of sociology at the Technical University of Berlin, where he specializes in general sociological theory,…
Time Out interview with Tariq Ramadan
Over at Tim Out Chicago, the website has conducted a short interview with Tariq Ramadan, the influential Swiss public intellectual…
The church, the state, and the child
The child, as the psychoanalytic theorist Adam Phillips points out, “remains our most convincing essentialism.” By this he means that at…
Separationism and the sex abuse crisis
While greatly admiring the other pieces in this series and the humanist sensibility and critique that pervades them, I will…
Placing childhood sexual abuse in historical perspective
One of the major achievements of the past quarter century has been the growing awareness of the prevalence and damaging…
“In God We Teach”
Filmmaker Vic Losick recently released "In God We Teach," a documentary about a public high school student who surreptitiously recorded a lecture given…
Everson’s Children
Everson v. Board of Education is considered a landmark of First Amendment jurisprudence. That 1947 case marks the first time…