Thursday, May 28, 2020
The purpose of this competition is to promote legal and academic studies in the field of religious liberty by law students pursuing related graduate studies. Students who have graduated from law school, but are not yet practicing law due to clerkships or other similar pursuits are also eligible to submit papers.
Deadline; July 1, 2020
Sponsored by the Washington DC / Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society & The International Center for Law and Religion Studies
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
This "webinar", brought to us by the Lumen Christi Institute, looks really good:
After two months of lockdown, nations across Europe and parts of the US are relaxing restrictions and facing new challenges. Where do we stand economically and socially? How might we have better protected the medically and economically vulnerable? How should we view the lockdown with its costs and benefits ethically? Our earlier event on "The Economic Costs of the Pandemic: Catholic Social Teaching and Economics in Dialogue,” provoked lively reactions. This event will consider what the principles of the common good, human dignity, justice, and solidarity mean in our present circumstances and how they ought to inform our prudential judgement going forward. Join as a panel of economists, theologians, and ethicists discuss lessons learned in the pandemic.
Useful preparation for the webinar might include Fr. John Jenkins's recent op-ed in The New York Times, regarding the University of Notre Dame's plans to re-open in August. Among other things, he said:
The pivotal question for us individually and as a society is not whether we should take risks, but what risks are acceptable and why. Disagreements among us on that question are deep and vigorous, but I’d hope for wide agreement that the education of young people — the future leaders of our society — is worth risking a good deal.
Indeed, the mark of a healthy society is its willingness to bear burdens and take risks for the education and well-being of its young. Also worthy of risk is the research that can enable us to deal with the challenges we do and will face.
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
If you missed the recent PBS documentary featuring Clarence Thomas, you can watch it at the PBS website here.
Although Clarence Thomas remains a controversial figure, loved by some, reviled by others, few know much more than a few headlines and the recollections of his contentious confirmation battle with Anita Hill. Unscripted and without narration, the documentary takes the viewer through this complex and often painful life, dealing with race, faith, power, jurisprudence, and personal resilience.
Thursday, May 21, 2020
In his recent piece in Law & Liberty, Mark Movsesian made the following observation: “For the moment ... there is this striking fact: churches’ opposition to state-ordered closings seems to turn, not so much on the particulars of worship itself, but on attitudes about hierarchy and government authority more generally.” In other words, more hierarchical religions appeared to be less willing to defy (or even challenge) state orders. This statement was observably true just a week ago. However, it left me wondering just how momentary this “moment” might be. Yesterday, we received some clarity.
On May 20th, the Catholic Bishops of Minnesota formally announced their intent to defy Governor Walz’s Emergency Executive Order. Their letter states in part:
We are blessed to live in a nation that guarantees the free exercise of religion. This right can only be abridged for a compelling governmental interest, and only in a way that is narrowly tailored to be the least restrictive means of achieving the desired end. That is why a large majority of states now allow in-person religious services, including many states that had previously suspended in-person religious services. We think that the executive order issued last Wednesday fails this test. An order that sweeps so broadly that it prohibits, for example, a gathering of 11 people in a Cathedral with a seating capacity of several thousand defies reason. Therefore, we have chosen to move forward in the absence of any specific timeline laid out by Governor Walz and his Administration. We cannot allow an indefinite suspension of the public celebration of the Mass.
The bishops’ decision follows their attempts to work alongside the Governor’s administration to find a suitable alternative to the current policy. All six bishops have also announced that they will continue their dispensation of Sunday Mass, so parishioners need not attend if they feel unsafe. The state-wide unity of the bishops is particularly notable, and in this regard, similar to the protests made by the Italian Bishops Conference.
Of course, the vast majority of Catholic dioceses continue to comply with state orders, even going to great lengths to do so. For example, in the Diocese of Arlington (my own diocese in Northern Virginia), Bishop Burbidge has begun reintegrating half of his diocese as part of Governor Northam’s “Phase 1” plan, while continuing to comply with the Governor’s prolonged Stay-at-Home Order in the other half. Other bishops have publicly voiced their support for state authorities. Archbishop Lori, the Archbishop of the Baltimore Archdiocese and former head of the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), stated—“I have no sense whatsoever that the authorities, especially here in Maryland, have any animus against our faith. I do have a sense from my personal conversations with those who have to make these decisions … that they want to keep people safe.”
A general trend seems to be to give local pastors discretion in the reintegration of their church, consistent with diocesan guidance. However, to put it lightly, this guidance is often less than clear—individual bishops frequently provide their own recommendations and requirements, but also defer to outside guidance. Additional guidelines for local pastors can include mandatory (but often changing) state orders, guidance from the USCCB, and CDC guidance (although notably these most recent CDC guidelines did not include any recommendations for faith-based groups).
All of this is to say that reopening won’t be simple. Professor Movsesian’s observation was true just a week ago; religions more inclined towards hierarchy did indeed appear to be less opposed to state orders. Now, that moment looks as if it may be beginning to pass. While it obviously remains unlikely that Catholic dioceses will oppose state orders en masse, it seems increasingly likely that select dioceses will. In fact, the complexity of the Church’s structure may itself begin to contribute to the likelihood of opposition within.
Minnesota’s Catholic bishops have informed the state’s governor that they will return to in-person Church services later this month in defiance of an executive order imposing strict limits on houses of worship.
In a letter sent to Governor Tim Walz on May 20, Archbishop Bernard Hebda of Saint Paul and Minneapolis said that services would resume on May 26, two months after they were first voluntarily suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Full article at Crux.
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
That's the title of a short piece I did some weeks back for the Berkley Center at Georgetown (and somehow forgot to hawk here on MOJ at the time). It talks about polarization during the Reformation and then today:
[V]igorous protection of religious liberty is intended to calm fears and reduce polarization, by giving people of fundamentally different deep beliefs ample space not just to hold their beliefs but also to live consistently with them....
Fear of the other side likewise drives today’s polarization. How, it’s asked, could 81% of white evangelicals vote in 2016 for a man with glaring character defects? A Wheaton College survey of those Trump voters found that religious liberty worries ranked third or fourth most frequent as the chief reason for their vote—higher than abortion and LGBTQ issues. The solicitor general’s statement [in Obergefell, refusing to rule out conservative institutions being stripped of tax exemptions] and the [2016] California college bill [which would have stripped modest-income students at conservative religious colleges of their state grants] received extensive evangelical attention.
Religious liberty can calm such existential fears and reduce polarization. But it will instead aggravate polarization if it simply replicates struggles over underlying issues. Religious liberty must be strong enough to protect unpopular views, and it must recover some bipartisan status.
1. The Murphy Institute at St. Thomas has posted video from Asma Uddin's excellent presentation, "When Islam is Not a Religion: Inside America's Fight for Religious Freedom." I was glad to moderate the session, which concerns respecting religious liberty for Muslim Americans and for everyone and is based on Asma's book of the same title. A variety of good questions from a large online audience (going online creates real possibilities for increasing outreach for organizations that are outside the Beltway hothouse). My own recent thoughts on religious freedom for Muslims, evangelical Christians, and everyone are here.
2. The Berkley Center at Georgetown sponsored a video discussion of the issues concerning COVID-19 and religious worship and other gatherings, with Marty Lederman, Asma Uddin, Robin Fretwell Wilson, and me. Thank you to Michael Kessler for arranging and leading the discussion, to the Berkley Center for sponsoring it, and to my friends and co-panelists for a lively, productive discussion.
The arguments have a more Protestant-Establishment vibe to them, as you might expect, but they overlap in concrete ways with arguments being made today.
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
In a late Monday ruling, the Oregon Supreme Court stepped in to put a hold on a dramatic decision by an eastern Oregon judge that declared not only Gov. Kate Brown’s restrictions on church gatherings “null and void” but all her “Stay Home Save Lives’’ coronavirus emergency orders.
Saturday, May 16, 2020
Liberty University has shuttered its department of philosophy. This is a mistake. I implore the University's administration and trustees to reverse course.
Liberty, of course, is a controversial school. It is a proudly and unabashedly evangelical Christian institution. Its founder, Rev. Jerry Falwell, was controversial. Its current president, Jerry Falwell, Jr. is controversial. The moral values it upholds and stands for are, today, alas, controversial. But it has provided many young people with an excellent liberal arts education. I know this to be true because I have met a number of them and even taught or informally advised a few as graduate students. I also know it to be true because I have visited the University and talked with students.
My visit was last year, together with my beloved friend and teaching partner Cornel West. We spent a day-and-a-half meeting faculty, staff, and students. We did not meet President Falwell--he was not on campus--though we were assured that far from opposing our visit he enthusiastically endorsed it. (Falwell is best known as a supporter and confidante of President Trump. Both Cornel and I, from our different perspectives, have been critical of the President.) We did a formal presentation before a massive audience but then had opportunities to talk with students individually and in small groups. These conversations were unsupervised by faculty or administrators. The students could speak freely to us, and they certainly availed themselves of that freedom. We were, to say the least, impressed.
We were impressed by the desire of these young men and women to explore the deepest questions, and to explore them in a critical, unconditional way. They wanted to know the best that has been thought and said by the greatest minds--from the pagan Greek and Roman thinkers, to the Islamic and Jewish as well as Christian philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages, to the grand figures of Enlightenment and modern thought. And it was clear from our discussions with these students that their professors in philosophy and the other humanities disciplines had indeed exposed them to the ideas of many of these thinkers--to their considerable intellectual benefit.
Cornel and I came away from our visit to Liberty with esteem for its students and faculty and respect for the University. We said so publicly--even though that is, to say the least, an unfashionable thing for professors at Harvard and Princeton to say. (We're expected to disdain institutions like Liberty University, pity the students, and hold the faculty in something not too distant from contempt.) And we came away thinking of ourselves as having a relationship with the folks at Liberty--a bond. We want Liberty to flourish. We want it to be the best it can be. We want it to continue to provide a true and fine liberal arts education for students who are attracted to the religious and moral environment it offers.
And so I hope that the administration and trustees of Liberty will hear my plea as coming from a friend--someone who wishes you well and believes in your mission. Humanities are central to liberal arts learning and philosophy is the heart of the humanities. You cannot have a true liberal arts college or university that does not have a vibrant philosophy department or some equivalent institutional way of teaching students what is taught in departments of philosophy. Indeed, philosophy is where it all began--in Plato's Academy. Philosophy gives us the tools and motivation and rational justification for asking and seeking by proper methods honestly to answer all the questions that we categorize in other disciplines, from history and economics to chemistry and astronomy.
I know that some people do not regard philosophy as "practical" (though in truth it is the most practical of all academic disciplines). And I am aware that the need to cut costs often tempts people to cut things that seem "impractical." But far from abolishing philosophy as a course of study at Liberty, you should be strengthening the department (which was already a good one) and encouraging more students to enroll in its courses and even major in the field.
I am not condemning or scolding. We're all human and we all make mistakes and misjudgments. I've made plenty, believe me. But mistakes can often be rectified. And this one is in that category. There is no shame in saying, "well, we've given the matter some more thought and concluded that for Liberty to be the best Christian university it can be, we need to retain our philosophy department. The questions that philosophy explores are questions our students need to be wrestling with." Far from being embarrassing, such a decision would be applauded by everyone who understands the value and importance of liberal arts learning and who believes that Liberty should be a great Christian liberal arts university.
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