When Shrugging is Not an Option
- May/June 2025
- April 30, 2025
Kim Davis has become a symbol. To some, she represents a stubborn bigotry; to others, she’s a twenty-first-century American heroine. It’s an unlikely fate for the Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk, who labored in relative obscurity until the U.S. Supreme Court’s June verdict in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. Davis, who identifies as
READ MOREI’m back in the office now, but for a few days I was in another world; another time. I knew it to be so as our group drifted down the slopes of a valley toward a grove of gnarly old olive trees: some of them rather like empty wooden tubes with fresh green branches growing
READ MOREMartin Luther was on his way back to school after a visit with his parents in Mansfield, Germany, when he narrowly escaped being struck by lightning. He prayed to Saint Anna, the mother of the virgin Mary, “Help me, Saint Anna, I will become a monk!” 1 Twenty-one years old at the time, Luther spent
READ MOREThe twenty-first century will be more religious than the twentieth for several reasons. First is that, in many ways, religion is better adapted to a world of global instantaneous communication than are nation states and existing political institutions. Second is the failure of Western societies after World War II to address the most fundamental of
READ MORERoger Williams was the apostle of religious liberty—of soul liberty in the New World. He had the high honor, in the providence of God, of being the first man to establish in practice the emancipation of the conscience of man from the fetter of politico-ecclesiastical rule. He became the harbinger of religious liberty in its
READ MOREThe Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion,” wrote John Adams, the second president of the United States, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, dated November 4, 1816. The U.S. Supreme Court building has four displays of the Ten Commandments along with other allusions to antiquity: the first is engraved on
READ MOREThe pageantry and passion will long be remembered. The adoring crowds, the cheering children, the red carpets, the superlatives of welcome from heads of state, the gushing media accolades, the inspiring words transcending differences. Pope Francis is the fourth Roman pontiff to visit the United States, but without question—in the present age of 24-hour news,
READ MOREWhere can we find hope in the news from Iraq and Syria? With 3,000 Yezidi girls still enslaved by Islamic militants, millions displaced from their homes, and daily reports of more Christians being beheaded and crucified, the situation is clearly grim. Many girls in “Bazi’s” situation have committed suicide. She is one of the few
READ MOREThe recent case of the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples has provided us with a well-polished mirror in which to take a long, sobering look at the state of the religious freedom discourse in the United States. Clearly the picture isn’t encouraging. The rhetoric of religious freedom has
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