Opinion

Topic: How Important Are Chaplains? Chaplains in America are older than the nation. This includes military chaplains and legislative chaplains. In fact, when the ACLU challenged the chaplain program in the early 1980s, the Supreme Court ruled against them because of the historical reality of the whole chaplaincy program, which predated the writing of the […]

Topic: Slavery and the Catholic Church. We are reminded today ad nauseam about slavery, America’s original sin. Like many other nations around the globe at the time of our founding, our founding fathers did not rid slavery from the land—although some of the founders actually did try to do that, but we wouldn’t have become […]

Topic: Sir William Blackstone and the Declaration of Independence. Our Declaration of Independence references “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” The chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court Thomas Parker, notes that such phraseology reflects the influence of Sir William Blackstone, who wrote four commentaries on the laws of England in the 1700s. These […]

It seems like everyone is talking these days about Rob Reiner’s hitjob movie against the religious right. It makes “Christian Nationalists” into the bogeyman. Although I travel in the circles of Christian conservatives, I have yet to meet anyone who has actually seen Reiner’s movie. But I have seen a trailer for it. The thesis […]

Topic: Was Thomas Jefferson a “Christian Nationalist”? Was Thomas Jefferson a Christian Nationalist? That question may sound absurd, but consider this. Recently, Jefferson biographer Mark Beliles wrote: “A new documentary movie by Rob Reiner is now out on the topic of Christian Nationalism…..Followers assert that ‘the US is meant to be a Christian nation and […]