Cross & Gavel Podcast

One of the cliches of culture is that we are polarized. Perhaps because it has become so commonplace to speak of our divisions, our divisions have become normalized. In my conversation today, I speak with someone who is very much at the heart of the American political order and has a unique vantage point for elucidating the cosmic significance of our clashes. Jim DeMint is an American businessman, author, and retired politician who served as a United States Senator from South Carolina and as president of The Heritage Foundation. A leading figure in the Tea Party movement, Jim is a member of the Republican Party and is the founder of the Senate Conservatives Fund. His most recent accomplishment was serving as the founding chairman of the Conservative Partnership Institute. Jim and I talk about his new book entitled What the Bible Really Says About Creation, End Times, Politics, and You. I ask him about his faith inside the many offices he held, the church and whether he trusts the pastors to deliver the "right" message, his reading of Ephesians 6 and the cosmic war at play, and much more.

Today marks the 200th episode of the Cross & Gavel. As part of that celebration, I have brought back the original host to have an unscripted and (mostly) unedited conversation about all things ministry, movies, books, and more. Mike Schutt is now the Executive Director of Worldview Academy, the director of the CLS Law School Fellows Program, and the author of the seminal work for Christian law students, Redeeming Law: Christian Calling and the Legal Profession. Mike is also an affiliate professor at Trinity Law School and a decent human being (I don't care what Myron says). Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

My guest today comes from outside the United States and has been studying the religious freedom landscape in Australia for quite some time. In his new book—Unshaken Allegiance: Living Wisely as Christians with Diminishing Religious Freedoms—he chronicles many of these challenges, offering a constructively approach to matters of difference and the various ways to express our Christian identity in the heat of public contest. Patrick Parkinson (AM, MA, LLM, LLD) is an Emeritus Professor of Law and former Dean of Law at the University of Queensland. He has been involved in advocacy for religious freedom in Australia for many years, in particular as board member and sometime Chair of Freedom for Faith. He is an expert on family law and child protection and has held various positions chairing governmental advisory bodies in Australia in these areas, leading to significant law reform. Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

My guest this week is Whittney Barth, an associate teaching professor at Emory Law School and the Executive Director and Charlotte McDaniel Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. Our conversation centers around her new piece arguing that religious actors act as friction creators in the discussion and development of AI tools, ethics, and regulation. Full paper: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/14/5/67 Full bio: https://cslr.law.emory.edu/people/cslr-leadership/barth-whittney.html Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

In this special film festival edition, I talk with Crystal L. Downing about the medium of film and how to approach the viewing experience. At the heart of our discussion is her new book, The Wages of Cinema: A Christian Aesthetic of Film in Conversation with Dorothy L. Sayers. Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

One of the major challenges in religious freedom law is figuring out to what extent a claim of accommodation is justified given the low barrier of entry for claims of sincerity. While American law tries to prevent a man from becoming what Justice Scalia in Smith called "a law unto himself," something of the sort is happening when a person claims that his faith prevents him from following the normal course of obedience. My conversation today helps illuminate some of this in a profound way, specifically looking at Soren Kierkegaard's ethical system and considering its corollary in the rule of law. My guest is Joshua Neoh, a senior lecturer in law at the Australian National University (ANU), Australia. He has an LLB, LLM and PhD from the ANU, Yale and Cambridge, respectively. Full bio. His paper at the heart of this conversation is called Kierkegaardian Ethics and the Rule of Law, available here. Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

In Part I, Ross Halperin and I laid a foundation for the work of ASJ in Honduras under the leadership of Kurt Ver Beek and others. In this episode, I am joined by Kurt himself to discuss his exchange of letters between Nicholas Wolterstorff in a wonderful book, Call for Justice: From Practice to Theory and Back, which looks at the meaning of justice and the work ASJ. Kurt is joined by Emily Cole, who has focused on Latin America most of her career and remains a passionate advocate for the well-being and development of that region. I speak to them about a number of things, focusing on the structural details of working in the area, including the difference between social justice and community development, the importance of long-term missionary work, the significance of elections, working with the government, and more. Kurt and his wife, Jo Ann Van Engen, are currently the directors of Calvin University's Justice Studies Semester, which studies the concept of justice in relation to history, economics, politics, sociology, and development in Honduras. Both are founding members of the Association for a More Just Society (ASJ) in Honduras. ASJ seeks to do justice in Honduras and inspire others around the world to seek justice in their own contexts. For more. Emily Cole is a lawyer and an advocate, writing about poetry, human rights, and community development, with a focus on Latin America. For more on her work on covenantal pluralism, go here. She also recently wrote for the Journal of Christian Legal Thought considering the role of the poetic imagination in Latin America. Read it here. Both are Fulbright recipients, with a focus on work in Honduras and Ecuador, respectively. Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

Today, we start a two-part journey into the heart of Honduran society. Our focus will be on one man, Kurt Ver Beek, and the organization he co-founded, Association for a More Just Society (ASJ). Kurt is a professor of Sociology (Emeritus) at Calvin University and lead investigator for an agreement between Transparency International, the Honduran Government, and ASJ. For this first episode, we are joined by the reporter Ross Halperin, whose recent biography (here) of Kurt's ministry (New York Times profile here) paints a fascinating picture of a man dedicated to the cause of justice. While Ross and I do not discuss the entire scope of the book, we do focus on the criminal justice system and the many barriers erected for victims seeking relief. Ross and I talk about how he came to write the book, the work of ASJ in helping reduce the violence in Honduras, some of the main characters in the story, and much more. Ross attended Harvard University and worked under Mark A. R. Kleiman, one of the world's leading criminal-justice scholars. He started reporting this story in 2018 and has since spent much of his time in Honduras. Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

My conversation today is on the necessity of adaptive leadership in the coming wave that is artificial intelligence. My guest is Kevin Frazier, the newly minted AI Innovation and Law Fellow at The University of Texas School of Law. His article (here) in Law & Liberty is called Building an AI-Savvy Workforce. His new podcast, Scaling Law (here), is excellent. Find his other work at Lawfare (here). Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

On June 20, 2025, the Fifth Circuit returned its decision in the Louisiana Ten Commandments case (here), upholding the District Courts order blocking the law from going into effect. This was followed by a petition on June 26 for a rehearing en banc by the State (here). At the same time, Texas passed its on bill (here) requiring displays of the Ten Commandments in classrooms. On June 24, that law was challenged in the Northern District of Texas (here) by a group of parents seeking to stop the bill from going into effect. Needless to say, our topic today is very timely, discussing the history of public displays of the Ten Commandments in public schools. My guests are Mark David Hall and Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, who wrote an article on the topic pending publication in the William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal entitled Ten Commandments in the Public Square and Public Schools (draft here). Mark David Hall (bio) joined the faculty of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University in 2023. He is one of the most outstanding scholars of early America, whose many distinguished publications have argued persuasively for the crucial importance of Christianity in the flourishing of America's experiment in ordered liberty. Andrea Picciotti-Bayer (bio) is Director of the Conscience Project. A Stanford-educated lawyer, she has dedicated her legal career to civil rights and appellate advocacy. She got her start as a trial and appellate attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Prior to leading the Conscience Project, she served as the legal advisor for the Catholic Association, filing amicus briefs with federal courts of appeal and the U.S. Supreme Court in key religious freedom and free speech cases. Resources noted by the guests: RFI, John Witte's book, and The Sacred Rights of Conscience (Liberty Fund) book. Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.