Robert Louis Wilken— To understand how religious freedom came to be cherished as a fundamental human right, the story must begin long before the Enlightenment and the development of modern political ideas and institutions. Its origins are not political but religious, and its history is a tale of inwardness, of
Makoto Fujimura— As I write from the desk overlooking my Princeton farm, Bluebirds and Tree Swallows have begun to nest. The peeper frogs have serenaded our evening walks. The spring thaw gives us hope, at least a pause, in our intense and dark pandemic world. And in the scarce winter of
Leon R. Kass— Exodus, the second of the Five Books of Moses (The Torah), contains some of the most famous stories in Western literature: the enslavement of the Children of Israel by Pharaoh in Egypt, the rescue of baby Moses from the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter, God’s call to Moses
Anthony T. Kronman— I can now see that my anxious wish to master my world in thought has from the start been a longing to understand its relation to eternity, but without a God of the sort to whom Christians, Jews and Muslims pray. This is an intellectual longing, of
Arthur Green— There is only One. That is the great truth of mysticism, found within and reaching beyond all religions. That One embraces, surrounds, and fills all the infinitely varied forms that existence has taken and ever will take. We Jews call that truth out twice daily in reciting Shema‘
Thomas S. Kidd— From Eisenhower to Romney, white evangelical voters had supported Republican candidates who seemed to model personal dignity and respect for religion, even if they did not have evangelical bona fides. At times Republican evangelicals have been credulous about Republican candidates, especially Richard Nixon. But 2016 found white
William N. Eskridge Jr.— From the beginning of the marriage equality debate, the main critics of marriage between persons of the same sex were religious intellectuals and public figures such as Phyllis Schlafly, Josef Ratzinger, Jim Dobson, Phil Burris, Lou Sheldon, Lynn Wardle, Maggie Gallagher, Robby George, Richard Land, and
Ramsay MacMullen— At Nicaea in AD 325 some 200 bishops assembled. The total is not certain: perhaps a little below that figure, probably a little above it. Not all who attended signed, as was not unusual at the end of councils nor surprising at this one, given its special difficulties.
Edward L. Greenstein— Determining the time and place of the book’s composition is bound up with the nature of the book’s language. The Hebrew prose of the frame tale, notwithstanding many classic features, shows that it was composed in the post-Babylonian era (after 540 BCE). The poetic core of the
Kenneth Austin— On August 22, 1614, Vincenz Fettmilch, a Calvinist gingerbread-maker, led an attack on Frankfurt’s ghetto, a single street known as the Judengasse (“Jews’ Lane”). When it was first established, the community had about 150 residents; by the early seventeenth century, this number had risen to almost 2,000. Its