Cross & Gavel Podcast

All year, we've witnessed in America a law enforcement presence dedicated to a single mission: mass deportation. While initially this mission was centered on the eradication of dangerous criminals, those now detained with no criminal history has outpaced those with convictions or pending criminal charges. The stories have been saddening and legally complex, leaving Christians with a tension between the mandates of "loving the foreigner in our midst" and the respect we owe to the ruling authorities appointed by God. A tension that cannot be broken by partisanship or by reducing this multifaceted issue to a binary designation of legal vs. illegal. In today's episode, I talk to two World Relief staff members working in this area about the state of things in our country in an effort to continue my own education and to show just how complicated this all is. Ted Oswald and Anna Colby are both attorneys with World Relief's Immigration Legal Services helping immigrants and refugees in the Sacramento area. (You can find some of Anna's writing here.) Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

In 2010, the Supreme Court issued a consequential opinion that stifled the freedom of association across countless campuses when it came to religious groups. In CLS v. Martinez, in a divided 5-4 opinion, the Court opened the way for universities to limit group association by refusing to grant them power to elect those leaders best suited to carry on that group's mission and purpose. In a forthcoming article (here) in the Texas Review of Law and Politics, my guest today, Benjamin Fleshman, covers the infamous Martinez decision and the problem it created for student organizations across the country. Given the closeness of this topic to my own work, we discuss in some detail the infamous "all comers" policy (see this and this) still upheld in some law schools, e.g., UC-Berkeley (see this), nature of student organizations, the importance of recent Supreme Court decisions (see recent FCA en banc decision in the Ninth Circuit and then the other mentioned FCA case in Washington, D.C.), the recent attempts to strengthen group access (see this), and more. Benjamin joined The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty as Counsel in 2023. His work there focuses on appellate litigation in both state and federal courts. Prior to joining Becket, Ben worked as an associate at Shearman & Sterling in Washington, D.C., where he practiced antitrust law and complex commercial litigation. Before entering private practice, he served as a law clerk to Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Full bio. Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.

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.