When Shrugging is Not an Option
- May/June 2025
- April 30, 2025
When deeply held religious beliefs clash with public school lesson plans, finding workable solutions can be a challenge. What happens, though, when a solution is obvious, but compromise has been taken off the table? Illustration by Michael Glenwood On March 22, 2023, parents of public school students in Montgomery County, Maryland, received an email from
READ MOREIt seems odd that Canada and America should head in different directions when it comes to protecting religious free exercise. After all, our countries share more than just a border—we also share a commitment to democratic government, the rule of law, and individual liberties. South of the border, the U.S. Supreme Court has been busy
READ MOREDisagreement is inevitable, but disdain is optional. An interview with John Inazu. While attending a conference in Los Angeles, law professor John Inazu realized that he was just a few hours’ drive away from the Manzanar National Historic Site—one of the camps in which more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II.
READ MOREWhen deeply held religious beliefs clash with public school lesson plans, finding workable solutions can be a challenge. What happens, though, when a solution is obvious, but compromise has been taken off the table? Illustration by Michael Glenwood On March 22, 2023, parents of public school students in Montgomery County, Maryland, received an email from
READ MOREDoes a 70-year-old tax code provision known as the Johnson Amendment protect America’s houses of worship? Or unconstitutionally restrain them? Local church pastor Stephen Cook provides a view from the pulpit. The Apostle Paul may have been the original church gossip. Allow me to explain. “Gossip,” before it came to its current meaning, had a
READ MOREOklahoma has created a new office within its Education Department to “protect parents, teachers, and students’ abilities to practice their religion freely in all aspects” and “oversee the investigation of abuses to individual religious freedom or displays of patriotism.” In his November press release State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters said the office will
READ MOREHow Afghanistan became the world’s largest prison for women and girls. In the summer of 2021, U.S. and NATO troops scrambled to exit Afghanistan, leaving behind a fragile democratically elected government and a country in turmoil. Sima Samar, Afghanistan’s former minister of women’s affairs, along with women’s rights scholar Dyan Mazurana, describe what happened next.
READ MOREThis year marks 500 years since a largely forgotten act of defiance helped birth modern religious freedom. Baptism as an act of political revolution? It certainly was viewed as such 500 years ago in the city of Zurich, Switzerland, where Anabaptist leader Conrad Grebel and his companions debated with Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli the question
READ MOREAn enduring dispute in American public education concerns teaching about human origins and whether students must receive instruction solely on evolution or can learn about the Genesis account of creation in science classes. A recent Indiana case, Reinoehl v. Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation, demonstrates how this dispute lingers on, almost a century after the first case
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