scotus

The week in religion, poetically…

The week in religion, poetically.

No matter what we academics think of the cultural movement in this country that entertainers like Glenn Beck have so easily tapped into, we prove their point when we offer our last seat on an all Ivy-League court to the former dean of Harvard Law School.

A roundup of the latest from the world of religion.

Focus on the Family retracts its potential support for a nominee with ‘gay tendencies.’

The Supreme Court struck down a century of regulations limiting corporate money in politics, clearing the way for a new Gilded Age. In the original Gilded Age (which inspired the Social Gospel movement), opposition was galvanized by a strong anti-corporate Christianity. Where’s the religious opposition now?

“The Constitution is not what the Court says it is. Rather it is what the people…eventually allow the Court to say it is.” A careful read of the history of great advances in American freedom reveals that high court decisions like Brown v. Board of Ed. actually relied both on the clarity of the argument and the perception that the nation was ready.

Why was a Utah city allowed to prevent a minority religion from erecting a monument next to a monument of the Ten Commandments? The Supreme Court’s Summum decision, litigated in the shadow of the Establishment Clause, raises more questions than answers.

Law Professor Jay Wexler comments on the “clear as oatmeal” SCOTUS decisions on monument issues.