This brief review reflects on Helge Ârsheim’s recent work, Making Religion and Human Rights at the United Nations. The text explores, with great success, the role of religion in an institution which “does not ‘do’ religion.” Ârsheim provides an accessible and comprehensive resource for anyone researching the role of religion in global affairs.

A brief review of Nelson Tebbe’s Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age, which seeks to resolve the the tension between the egalitarian impulse toward protections for the full rights of all individuals and the traditional American commitment to preservation of freedom to exercise sincerely held religious beliefs, even the beliefs of those who…[Read more]

Over the last several months, the Republican party and its current leader have consistently trumpeted their strong commitment to law and order. Especially during this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests (and riots), as well as in response to calls for greater oversight of and a more limited role for police forces, many Republicans, political c…[Read more]

2020 was a year defined by disaster and unrest, from impeachment to war to wildfires to a global pandemic to protest movements arising in the United States in response to police violence. This brief article reflects on Robert Bellah’s concept of American Civil Religion, particularly his focus on three times of trial. I argue that the nation’s…[Read more]

This brief review explores Randall Balmer’s recent work, Solemn Reverence: The Separation of Church and State in American Life. In this capsule history of church/state separation, Balmer deftly and succinctly illustrates the centrality of religious freedom to the story of America. Seeking to respond to American evangelical trends toward Christian…[Read more]

This review explores the arguments of Joshua Mauldin in his new volume Barth, Bonhoeffer, & Modern Politics. In this work, Mauldin turns to history, and the writings of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in search of helpful examples to which society can turn in an era when the modern democratic project appears perpetually to be teetering upon a…[Read more]

In June 2019, in the case of American Legion v. American Humanist Association, the United States Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that a World War I memorial cross could remain on public land without violating the Establishment Clause. The Court sought to produce a ruling focusing specifically on the historical context and motivations for construction of…[Read more]

I will mainly focus on a collection of films made between 1972 and 1985 by the Staatliche Filmdokumentation (SFD)—the State Film
Documentation unit—which survived as part of the collection of the Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR (SFA), the former national film archive
of the GDR.