Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Faith
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Do Educated People Believe In God More Or Less?
Ryan Burge (Eastern Illinois University; Author, The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going (2d ed. 2023)), Do Educated People Believe in God More or Less?: As a country becomes more educationally advanced and economically prosperous, it will become less religious. … I’ve written a lot about the impact…
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Conservative Christian Colleges Are Facing Cancel Culture Problems
Newsweek, Conservative Campuses Are Facing Cancel Culture Problems: An increasing number of academics are speaking out about Christian colleges, claiming they were forced out of their jobs because of the rising intensity of conservative politics on campuses. Cancel culture, in which an individual perceived to have acted in an unacceptable manner is ostracized, typically refers…
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Brunson: Religious Tax Protest Before And After RFRA
Sam Brunson (Loyola-Chicago; Google Scholar), Leave Your Conscience at the Court: Religious Tax Protest Before and After RFRA, Canopy Forum on the Interactions of Law & Religion: In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of Americans objected, on religious grounds, to paying income taxes on the grounds that certain government spending violated their religious beliefs.…
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This Week’s Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
Legal Education: Bryce Clayton Newell (Oregon), 2024 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews ABA Resolution 514 & Resolution 515, ABA ‘Urges’ Law Schools To Permit Paid Externships And Encourage Pay Transparency In OCI Derek Muller (Notre Dame), When Should Law Students Decline A Judicial Clerkship? ABA Journal, 900-Lawyer Duane Morris Sued For Misclassifying Non-Equity Partners…
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Did God Protect Donald Trump On July 13th?
Did God Protect Donald Trump?, by Bonnie Kristian (Christianity Today; Author, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (2022)): If you’ve been on social media much since the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump … , you’ve likely seen the claim: He survived the shooting because he…
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WaPo Op-Ed: Do Not Mess With The Very Old
Washington Post Op-Ed: Do Not Mess With the Very Old, by Anne Lamott (Author, Somehow: Thoughts on Love (2024)): Many elderly friends have what I call the chime. It is a vibrating energy that certain artistic and spiritual people exude, as do people with a basic spirit of generosity. Almost silent, the chime rings like…
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Christian Faith Was Jackie Robinson’s Haven In A Heartless World
Christianity Today Book Review: Christian Faith Was Jackie Robinson’s Haven in a Heartless World, by Clayton Trutor (Norwich University) (reviewing Gary Scott Smith (Grove City College), Strength for the Fight: The Life and Faith of Jackie Robinson (2022)): Historian Gary Scott Smith has built onto the wing of the Jackie Robinson library that Henry, Long,…
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This Week’s Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
Legal Education: Todd Zywicki (George Mason), How Law School Got Woke The Princeton Review, 2024 Law School Rankings: Overall Ranking Wall Street Journal, Merit, Excellence And Intelligence: An Anti-DEI Approach Catches On In Companies — Is Higher Ed Next? Steven Dean (Boston University), The Law School Hiring Market Undervalues Women, Minorities Washington Post, Wait, Is…
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Kamala Harris’s Faith
NPR, Kamala Harris and Faith: a Baptist With a Jewish Spouse and Ties to the Black Church and Gandhi: Black clergy who know Vice President Kamala Harris, now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, marvel at the fusion of traditions and teachings that have molded her religious faith and social justice values. A Baptist…
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Religious Liberty In The States
Mark David Hall (Regent) & Paul Mueller (American Institute for Economic Research), Religious Liberty in the States: When Americans think about religious liberty, our minds naturally turn to the protections offered by the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This amendment, and related…
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One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search For Salvation
Daniel Silliman (News Editor, Christianity Today), One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation (2024): Impious and amoral, petty and vindictive, Richard Nixon is not the typical protagonist of a religious biography. But spiritual drama is at the heart of this former president’s tragic story. The night before his resignation, Richard Nixon wept—and prayed. Though…
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This Week’s Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
Legal Education: Noah Feldman (Harvard), Why Yale Law Is So Good At Producing Reactionaries Like JD Vance Princeton Review Law School Rankings: Academic Experience Admissions Selectivity Career Rating Professors (Accessibility) Professors (Teaching) Professors (Teaching And Accessibility) Nancy Levit (UMKC) & Allen Rostron (UMKC), Fall 2024 Law Review Article Submission Guide Matt Lawrence (Emory), One Professor’s…
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Christian Perspectives On The Attempted Assassination Of President Trump: Political Violence, Love, Glory, Courage, And Grace
Christianity Today Op-Ed: Put Away Your Swords, by Esau McCaulley (Wheaton College; Author, How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South (2023): Jesus used his final moments with his disciples before the crucifixion to heal his opponent’s ear—and model the way of love. In the Gospel narratives, a…
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In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face To Face With The Idea Of An Afterlife
New York Times Book Review, Sebastian Junger Is Reporting Live From the Brink of Death (reviewing Sebastian Junger, In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife (2024)): Over the course of his reporting career, Sebastian Junger has had several close calls with death. … In the introduction to…
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Father Mike: The Bible In 10 Minutes
Father Mike, The Bible in 10 Minutes: The Bible is amazing … but sometimes confusing and hard to read. How can we understand the whole story? From Ascension and Fr. Mike Schmitz—creators of the Bible in a Year podcast—comes a beautiful, clear, shareable summary of the story of salvation: the Bible in 10 Minutes. If…
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This Week’s Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
Legal Education: Inside Higher Ed, Columbia Law Professor Katherine Franke May Be Fired Following Complaint Filed By Two Colleagues New York Times, Sullivan & Cromwell Will Use Background Checks To Weed Out Antisemitic Prospective Hires AccessLex, Undergraduate GPA Growth Is A Superior Metric In Law School Admissions Nicholas Mignanelli (Yale), The Legal Tech Bro Blues:…
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The Bible And The Bard: The Gospel According To Shakespeare
F. LaGard Smith (Pepperdine) & John H. Parker (Lipscomb), The Gospel According to Shakespeare: 40 Inspiring Devotionals from the Bible and the Bard (2023): Daily Devotionals Inspired by Shakespeare For those who love Shakespeare and Scripture, this is the best of both.Shakespeare’s writings are filled with classic biblical themes, such as guilt, redemption, sacrifice, forgiveness,…
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Tim Scott And The Role Of Chaste, Single, Mature Christians In Politics And The Church
Christianity Today Op-Ed: Why We’re Weird for Thinking That Tim Scott Is Weird: by Zachary Wagner (Author, Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering Healthy Male Sexuality (2023)): Tim Scott entered politics decades ago as a proud 30-year-old virgin. Campaigning at the height of 1990s evangelical “purity culture,” he proclaimed that sex should be reserved for marriage. Years later,…
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WaPo Op-Ed: The Meaning Of Hagar
Washington Post Op-Ed: The Meaning of Hagar, by Marilynne Robinson (Author, Reading Genesis (2024)) (reviewed here): The Bible’s human authors put characters in play for a reason. What were they trying to tell us with the servant girl cast in the wilderness? The book of Genesis evokes the vernal moment, the very spring of Being,…
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This Week’s Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
Legal Education: Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed (Steven Teles), Why Are There So Few Conservative Professors? Scott Devito (Jacksonville), As The Percentage Of Accommodated Students In A Law School Increases, Its First-Time Bar Pass Rate Decreases Becket, UCLA Defends Facilitating Antisemitic Encampments On Campus The Hill, Law Schools Left Reeling After Latest Supreme Court Earthquakes…
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WaPo Op-Ed: Gentle Is The Joy That Comes With Age
Washington Post Op-Ed: Gentle is the Joy That Comes With Age, by Anne Lamott (Author, Somehow: Thoughts on Love (2024)): Some of my much older friends have 10 doctors or more, like an overeducated friend community. I have only six so far. But time lurches on and the reality is that, before too long, I will…
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Were Christian Colonists Justified In Fighting In The Revolutionary War?
Christianity Today Op-Ed: Were Christian Colonists Justified in Fighting in the Revolutionary War?, by Mark A. Noll (Regent; Author, Christians in the American Revolution): Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.Rom. 13:1 (NIV) Submit…
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Roger Federer’s Dartmouth Graduation Speech: Winning In Tennis — And In Life
Washington Post, For Tennis’s Greatest Winners, the Slimmest Margin Makes All the Difference: Carlos Alcaraz embodies Roger Federer’s fundamental lesson: Tennis champions are defined not by the titles they win but by the points they lose. There is no better place than Wimbledon to examine the slim difference between winners and pretenders. Centre Court is…
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This Week’s Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
Legal Education: Washington Post, Lawsuit: Northwestern’s Law School Is Biased Against White Men in Hiring New York Times, How A Trump-Beating, #MeToo Legal Legend Lost Her Law Firm Lisa Smith-Butler (Charleston), The Upper-Level Writing Paper and the Law Review Article: How to Tell Your Story ABA Journal, Online Purdue Global Law School To Add Full-Time…
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Things Worth Remembering: Why Forgiveness Matters
Douglas Murray (The Free Press), Things Worth Remembering: Why Forgiveness Matters: This week, I want to turn to a speech about forgiveness and why forgiveness is so important when it comes to freedom—the freedom of both the forgiver and the forgiven. Some speeches are memorable because of their rhetorical power. Others stick with you because…