On Wednesday, September 9, the Department of Education announced a new rule that will protect religious groups meeting on public university campuses. Kim Colby, the director of the Center for Law and Religious Freedom at Christian Legal Society, lays out why the regulation was necessary, and what it will mean for students. The Department's announcement is here ....
Join Drew Nelson and Mike Schutt as they discuss the insights and admonitions of Rod Dreher‘s 2017 The Benedict Option . The book has been widely discussed, and rightly so, in Christian circles since its publication, and, as Drew and Mike discuss, Dreher’s challenge to the Church to be the Church is a welcome one, regardless of the relative dangers of secular culture. Yet the book’s insights on that score are helpful, too, and Drew and Mike highlight Dreher's key insights on politics, education,...
Kim Colby and Reed Smith of the Center for Law and Religious Freedom unpack the troubling Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia , handed down June 15. Justice Gorsuch seems to abandon his vaunted "textualism" in favor of a convoluted "literalism" with disastrous results. This is part three of three episodes discussing the important Supreme Court decisions of the last three weeks. Between June 15 and June 30, 2020, the US Supreme Court handed down three significant decision...
Between June 15 and June 30, 2020, the US Supreme Court handed down three significant decisions of critical interest to religious conservatives. Kim Colby and Reed Smith, attorneys at the Center for Law & Religious Freedom, join host Mike Schutt to discuss each case. Their conversation is divided into three episodes, one for each case. Episode 92 features Kim Colby on Espinoza v. Montana Dept of Revenue, episode 93 focuses on June Medical Services v. Russo with Reed Smith, and episode 94 unp...
Between June 15 and June 30, 2020, the US Supreme Court handed down three significant decisions of critical interest to religious conservatives. Kim Colby and Reed Smith, attorneys at the Center for Law & Religious Freedom, join host Mike Schutt to discuss each case. Their conversation is divided into three episodes, one for each case. Episode 92 features Kim Colby on Espinoza v. Montana Dept of Revenue, episode 93 focuses on June Medical Services v. Russo with Reed Smith, and episode 94 unp...
Kim Colby, Director of the Center for Law & Religious Freedom, says that the Supreme Court will decide at least eight important religious freedom cases between now and next June. This term and next are "dream terms," she says, for religious freedom lawyers and court watchers. In this episode, she highlights five of these cases, beginning with the "church re-opening" case, South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom , decided on an emergency appeal earlier this month ("I am concerned and di...
Dr. Drew Trotter, executive director of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers , is a film critic who understands the role that movies play in shaping us as a society. His lecture, The Movies and America: What the Nominees for Best Picture Tell Us About Ourselves, is an annual favorite around the country. In this episode, Dr. Trotter sits down with host Mike Schutt to discuss the nominees for best picture. They discuss how we love our neighbors through watching movies, how to better understan...
Pastor Mark Bertrand has turned to the Psalms for his sermon texts during the global pandemic, and he joins Mike Schutt to discuss insights and encouragement from this rich source. You'll be encouraged as Mark explores how the "Songbook of the Church" speaks to us about lessons in crisis, sources of hope in trial, and the joys inherent in the life of faith. J. Mark Bertrand is the pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He is also a novelist and author, and he teaches o...
Host Mike Schutt again welcomes East Texas preacher Drew Nelson to the podcast to discuss The Odyssey , Homer's ancient epic poem about . . . well, wait. What is it about? Mike and Drew explore that question and more-- including why good Christians should read good pagan literature and why you might like The Odyssey -- as they highlight its major themes and give some background to the poem. Their hope is that a couple of regular guys reading big books might encourage other regular folks to do th...
Greg Rummel, President and CEO of Rummel Agency in Frankenmuth, Michigan , has a word of encouragement for us in this global pandemic: God's got this, too. Listen in as Greg shares with host Mike Schutt how battling cancer helped hm to think well about living in difficult times-- and to focus on what is really important. You'll be encouraged! Cross & Gavel podcast is a project of Christian Legal Society and Trinity Law School ....
"The efficiency brought by new forms of technology has just made us demand more of one another," says Myron Steeves, dean of Trinity Law School. "Our important innovations sometimes give us the opposite of what we desire." In this episode, Dean Steeves and Mike Schutt explore the topic of technology and the tyranny of time. If advances in technology and greater efficiency in our lives don't make us better people all by themselves, why do we keep chasing them as ends in and of themselves? Is too ...
Carl Caton is the founder and president of the San Antonio Marriage Initiative , a ministry focused on bringing help and hope to the city of San Antonio. Carl and his team, in partnership with volunteers around Texas, seek to network, equip, and mobilize the local church community to strengthen marriages in the city. One of the organization's key strategies is to "identify best practices and resources" and to "collaborate with like-minded individuals who will deploy that knowledge throughout the...
Join host Mike Schutt as he welcomes local preacher Drew Nelson to the podcast to talk about the classic "On the Incarnation," by Saint Athanasius, 4th Century Bishop of Alexandria. As a young man, Athanasius attended the Council of Nicea and spent the rest of his life standing firm against the Arian heresy that remained popular, despite its condemnation by Nicea. On the Incarnation is a wide-ranging apologetic regarding the eternal Son of God taking on flesh to reveal the Father and save humani...
The CLS Law School Fellows program is designed to build a community of scholars around the topics of professional formation, vocational stewardship, and Christian jurisprudence. Each year, CLS gathers a group of students in Washington, DC for an intense week of lectures, mentoring, discussion, and fellowship. CLS pays the expenses of accepted candidates. In this episode of Cross & Gavel, Fellows Founding Director Mike Schutt discusses the program with CLS CEO David Nammo, Trinity Law School ...
The Department of Education has proposed new regulations that are open for comment by the general public. Two sections of the new regulations are designed to protect religious student groups from being singled out and denied benefits because of their religious identity. Kim Colby, Director of the Center for Law and Religious Freedom at Christian Legal Society , summarizes the proposed regs and why they are needed. She also suggests that those who are in support of these regs should take action t...
Law professor Jeff Brauch argues that our beliefs about human nature will drive our politics, our policy, and our culture. In his recent book, Flawed Perfection: What It Means to Be Human and Why It Matters for Culture, Politics, and Law (2017), he lays out a compelling case for the importance of an accurate understanding of human nature. He begins with the idea that our fundamental presuppositions about the nature of human beings will drive how we approach almost anything in the public sphere. ...
On the 80th episode of Cross & Gavel, August Huckabee, economics professor at Worldview at the Abbey in Colorado, returns ("Feel the Bern," Ep. 52) to discuss cultural trends and countermeasures in these strange times. August teaches students at the Abbey, directs TeenPact programs around the country, and lectures at Worldview Academy. Host Mike Schutt asks him about trends he is seeing in this generation and what educators and parents might do to cultivate both courage and grace in the face...
This week, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission , holding that the Commission's "clear and impermissible hostility toward" religious beliefs violated the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Already, commentators dispute the breadth and lasting import of the Court's 7-2 holding on narrow legal grounds. In this episode, Mike Schutt talks with Kim Colby about these questions. Kim is Director of Christian Legal Society's Center f...
Episode 78 is Part 2 of our conversation about three Academy Award-nominated films, and it focuses on Call Me By Your Name, a romanticization of predatory sexual relationship. It's visual beauty hides the reality behind the relationship at the heart of the story and the deadly message that sexual experience is the defining element of our lives. Dr. Trotter and Mike Schutt discuss this film and its themes, and they wander into topics of movie-going, thoughtful criticism, and Christian worldview o...
Dr. Drew Trotter, executive director of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers , is a film critic who understands the role that movies play in shaping us as a society. His lecture, The Movies and America: What the Nominees for Best Picture Tell Us About Ourselves, is an annual favorite around the country. In this episode, Dr. Trotter sits down with host Mike Schutt to discuss three of the nominees, including the winner for best picture. In Part one, they discuss Guillermo del Toro's The Shape...
In August 2016, the American Bar Association, seeking to impose a "cultural shift" on the legal profession and change how lawyers think about gender and marriage, amended Model Rule of Professional Responsibility 8.4. The rule has no legal force-- it simply suggests a "model" from the ABA for states to follow in their ethics codes-- until a particular state adopts it. Yet the Model Rules are influential, followed by many states as a matter of course. The current rule-- the rule that ABA Model Ru...
In our first episode of 2018, Trinity Law School Professor Myron Steeves draws on the work of Charles Taylor ( A Secular Age ) and Rod Dreher ( The Benedict Option ) to inform our understanding of the cultural moment confronting the Church. Lately, it seems, the Church has found herself in a fully confrontational mode with the surrounding society, having moved from a period of general domination (after the Emperor Constantine) and then cultural accommodation. Professor Steeves contrasts these er...
One of the biggest free speech and religious liberty cases in decades, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission was argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on December 5. On December 6, Cross & Gavel host Mike Schutt recorded this conversation with religious liberty attorney Kim Colby, who sat in on the argument. Kim gives a short background of the case, shares her observations, and discusses the important issues raised by the attorneys and justices. Jack Phillip...
It may be commonplace to say that God has instituted various governments and has delegated His authority to them in various ways, but speaking, for example, about the "government" of a family seems strange today. And even a bit scary. Mark Bertrand says that we in the Church are pretty good at targeting failures of government when it comes to the state, but we need to do a much better job of thinking about governing well in the church and the family. What might that look like? How to think well ...
There is a higher law than human law, one from which the authority and justice of man’s law flows into bountiful life. Accordingly, we often see Christian legal theories in terms of knowledge about law, so that what we know of the higher law informs what we should affirm or deny about human law. But Dean Eric Enlow says that another important kind of Christian knowledge about law is how to praise God in relation to it . This praise stirs up and responds to the joy which Christians experience in ...
Mark Bertrand says that the world he "had been led to fear growing up in the Church is not actually the world we live in." It turns out that the moral relativism that we feared would turn the world to anarchy and chaos never materialized. Much of what we feared actually came to pass, just not in the way we thought it would. The new world has turned out to be a world that loves "the social gospel, but without the gospel," to paraphrase Joseph Bottum . Mark talks with host Mike Schutt about this s...
In our first fall episode of Cross & Gavel, Worldview at the Abbey Provost Jeff Baldwin discusses the duty of the Church and Christian families with respect to education. The conversation ranges from the role of the family to the religious nature of education itself, and then on to some of the problems inherent in state-sponsored education. Jeff tells host Mike Schutt that he thinks this may be "the most inflammatory episode of C&G to date," and he then sets the tone by suggesting that C...
On this episode of Cross & Gavel, host Mike Schutt talks with Christian Legal Society's new director of Attorney Ministries, Connie Bourne. Connie comes to CLS from a private law practice, with experience in the corporate world, as a judicial clerk, and working with attorneys in a local bar association. She loves Jesus and she loves lawyers! Listen in to get acquainted with Connie! Connie Bourne received her undergraduate and legal training at Rutgers University, worked as Assistant County C...
In early April, nearly 150 lawyers, judges, law students, and law professors from the eastern Congo gathered at the Fifth International Christian Lawyers Conference in Beni, North Kivu, DRC. It was an amazing time of fellowship, discussion, prayer, and planning. The lawyers gathered on the campus of Université Chrétienne Bilingue du Congo ("UCBC"), the only bilingual Christian University in the DRC. UCBC was founded by Congo Initiative under the guiding vision of Dr. David Kasal i. This year, UC...
In Part 2 of our discussion with Dr. Christopher McMillion, host Mike Schutt asks him to elaborate on the joys of federalism. Dr. McMillion begins by explaining why now-- the age of Trump-- might be an opportunity for those on both the left and the right to recognize its benefits and jump on board. He explains the 10th amendment, offers a brief definition of what we mean by "federalism," and then outlines some specific examples in which federalism would operate in a way that is appealing to the ...
