Sightings Articles

brown jackson swear in

religious identity | U.S. Supreme Court | American religion

Weary (and Wary) of Decisions, Opinions, and Polemics? Religious Wisdom Would Like a Word

Religion that is prescribed by a privileged few to control the lives of the many obfuscates human dignity, limits and cheapens life abundant, substitutes the trivial for the transcendent, and elevates a cruel justice that cannot admit its need for me...

July 1, 2022
abortion supporters protest 1960's

abortion | U.S. Supreme Court | reproductive freedom

Bad Faith History: The End of Roe v. Wade and The Supreme Court’s Myth about Abortion in the United States

The world that the Court’s opinion imagines is intimately (and frighteningly) consonant with a white, Christian nationalist vision of our nation....

July 1, 2022
empty church

political partisanship | Christian Nationalism | Roe v. Wade | Southern Baptist sexual abuse scandal | Federalist Society | U.S. Supreme Court

Partisanship in Religion and Politics

Many lament the obliteration of bipartisan politics: too few acknowledge it as a casualty of the idea that America is a "Christian nation"....

May 25, 2022
ACB

Catholicism | U.S. Supreme Court | Christian Right | political religion

The Problem with Calling Amy Coney Barrett Too Catholic

The tendentious historical origins of American Catholic Conservatism...

October 29, 2020

contraception | Hobby Lobby | religious liberty | U.S. Supreme Court | Zubik v. Burwell

The Meaning of Religious Exemptions

Governmental recognition of religious liberty is a pressing issue in our current politics. The 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act states that a generally applicable federal statute may not substantially burden “a person’s exercise of religion” un...

May 11, 2017

Roe v. Wade | Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt | U.S. Supreme Court | Texas | due process | Ruth Bader Ginsburg | John Hart Ely | Fourteenth Amendment | Janet Yellen | contraception | pro-life | pro-choice

Texas' Latest Restrictions on Abortions Challenged in U.S. Supreme Court

Last week, in the case of Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the question of whether Texas’ statute raising safety standards at abortion clinics, and requiring abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges, i...

March 10, 2016

Hobby Lobby | Little Sisters of the Poor | Jehovah's Witness | gay rights | reproductive freedom | women's health care | conservative religions | U.S. Supreme Court

Contemporary Hostility to the Free Exercise of Religion

Religious liberty is far down the path towards becoming a party-line culture war issue. And that is a disaster for religious liberty.   In extended questions and answers about religious liberty in the Republican presidential debate on February 25, ...

March 3, 2016