A judge in California ruled on Monday that teaching yoga in public schools does not violate the U.S. Constitution's separation…
Judge rules yoga not a threat to separation of church and state
law and religion
SCOTUS roundup: Rulings on DOMA and Prop 8
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 on Wednesday that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law…
CFP: Religious Studies 50 years after Schempp
On September 27-29, 2013, the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University-Bloomington will host a conference entitled “Religious Studies 50 Years after Schempp:…
Debating Sharia: Islam, Gender Politics, and Family Law Arbitration
In Debating Sharia: Islam, Gender Politics, and Family Law Arbitration, editors Anna C. Korteweg and Jennifer A. Selby gather a…
On the freedom of the concepts of religion and belief
This short piece attempts to come at the current debate on law and religious freedom from two unusual angles. I…
Three cheers for God
A Texas judge has ruled on the case of the Texas cheerleaders who were using banners with Christian Bible verses…
Religious freedom as a binding practice of suspicion
I would like to begin with a famous case in Egypt that, though over a decade and a half old,…
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…