Christopher Seitz and I recently formulated a “marriage pledge,” which First Things has hosted. It asks signers who are pastors to stop signing civil marriage licences as part of the Christian marriages at which they officiate, In this way, they will give public notice that Christian marriage is not what the state calls “marriage.” Continue Reading »
Malaysian court has denied a newspaper of the Roman Catholic Church the right to refer to God as “Allah.” Continue Reading »
Israel is a Jewish state but has not succeeded in defining just what that means in a national constitution. Although the 1948 Declaration of Independence called for the enactment of a constitution within months of the state’s inception, nothing has been achieved beyond a fragmentary “Basic . . . . Continue Reading »
Michael Burleigh’s study of European religion and politics requires us to imagine a very different Europe than the one we behold today—not the polity of bureaucrats in Brussels but a Europe of statesmen and revolutionaries who aimed at the most extravagant notions of national . . . . Continue Reading »
Sin and the Fall are what make government necessary. As such, government is not that which helps the human person to flourish, and Luther insists on the restraints and limits of government. Government is indeed, Bonhoeffer declares, “independent of the manner of its coming into being.” It is . . . . Continue Reading »
Religious Liberty in the Supreme Court: The Cases that Define the Debate over Church and State terry eastland november 1995, eerdmans, $31.50For all their concern about the rise of anti-democrats in post-Soviet Russia, when it comes to the decisive excellence of the American regime our . . . . Continue Reading »
June 17, 1948 Recent decisions of the Supreme Court have extended the meaning of the constitutional prohibition of an establishment of religion so that any action by the state that is intended to benefit all religious bodies without discrimination is forbidden. This development of the conception of . . . . Continue Reading »
Every year during the winter quarter my yearlong course in the history of Christianity reaches the eleventh-century Gregorian Reform and the Investiture Conflict. Every year my students struggle to make sense of the positions of Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII. With great effort some of them . . . . Continue Reading »
In the January issue, this section carried a commentary titled “The Catholic Church as Interest Group.” Among the points made was that, despite the bishops’ declared intention, a statement such as “Political Responsibility,” issued by the United States Catholic Conference (USCC), is in . . . . Continue Reading »
Under God: Religion and American Politicsby Garry WillsSimon and Schuster, 445 pages, $24.95 Garry Wills is an indefatigable iconoclast, and the icons that have felt the sting of his wit are as diverse in time as in form. They include ideas like the facile notion of Lockean hegemony in the . . . . Continue Reading »
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