Cross & Gavel Podcast

The legal profession tends to breed a type of disposition more akin to something in Homer than The Wonder Years . A rooted posture towards adversity rather than compromise or even common ground. Much of this is taught in law school, even if indirectly, with a ruthless employment competition cycle the second 1Ls start their fall semester and that infamous curve that pins students against one anothe...

Today, I discuss a book that goes to the heart of why religious freedom matters and how protecting its exercise confounds the forces of disintegration and violence. My guest is Allen D. Hertzke, whose book  Why Religious Freedom Matters is an indispensable resource for not only showing the true value of religion, but also why it remains so important that people of all stripes band together to prot...

In the last few years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a household name, slowly creeping into the corners of every technological device we've all grown to depend on. But what happens if the underlying training data and the people training the models perpetuate the common biases that we all from time to time commit against our neighbors—whether intentionally or not. That is the focus of our...

The John Witte, Jr. Lecture Series on Christianity & Law is back! A new venture from Christian Legal Society aimed at advancing the conversation surrounding the integration of Christianity & law. In our third lecture inspired by the Düsseldorf School of painting, we discuss law, family, and religion in late antiquity. Our keynote is Dr. Maria Doerfler , an Associate Professor of Late Antiquity at...

Many who discuss political theology run to the likes of Augustine or Aquinas to explain the ways their minds express the world and treat its people. And while those thinkers are profound and helpful, the idea of political theology carries a lifeblood that invites Christians to think creatively about its seams and the ways it informs and binds our common connections. That is why I'm excited to prod...

One of the most difficult issues to solve is the careful balance of criminal reform with the punitive aims of state power. While most of us don't want to needless lock up our neighbors, we are also in favor of the systematic creation of spaces of safety for our families and friends. But with underlying aims of justice comes the sins of man's overreach in search of solutions. Alas, enters mass inca...

One of the things that we at Christian Legal Society constantly implore law students to do is to think about what sort of lawyer they want to be. Yes, we want them to be successful, but more than that, we want them to bear witness to the grace of God and to manifest His character across the legal profession. My conversation today provides a much needed resource for those looking to develop their r...

Our first episode of the year takes us to Dayton, Ohio, where under the auspices of the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court sits the Kushinda Court ("the Court") under the vision and direction of the Honorable Gerald Parker. This Court is part of the wider strategy to create specialized dockets that allow for a therapeutic approach to law. My guest is Judge Parker, who talks to me about his journ...

One of the chief affections we as humans should pursue along with truth and virtue is the appreciation for beauty. As lawyers, we are uniquely predisposed to ignoring this element of human life for want of loveliness in our work and in the people we come across. My discussion today is an attempt to rethink the Christian attorney's relationship with beauty. My guest has written a seminal work ( her...

The question of natural law continues to come up in the context of Christian jurisprudence, and for good reason. It is a topic both fascinating and formative, touching on topics as vast as the origins of the American constitutional experiment , human vulnerability , and modern society . And so with the new book from Alex Deagon ( here ) on the interaction of Christian natural law and religious fre...

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 betwe...

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 forthcom...

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,...

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 st...

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 i...

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.co...

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 no...

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...

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...

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 ( h...

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...

This week, we have a special episode. One near and dear to my heart and my own intellectual history. It is a conversation with professor Marc O. DeGirolami on his piece published in the Oxford Journal of Law & Religion covering the life and death of law and religion. Read it here . In it, he takes us into the first wave of this movement and its advent forces with those like Harold Berman and John...

The Foundations Series is a new web content venture from CLS aimed at helping Christian law students transition from 3Ls to first-year associates. It features Christian practitioners skilled in the integration of faith and practice, offering guidance in conversation with students at the early stages of their legal development. My guests today are James A. Boatman &  Stephen Schahrer , collectively...

With the release of U.S. News Rankings last month , renewed interest has surfaced regarding the parameters and impact of placement. Where law schools fall speaks to not only the quality of their percieved education, but also success regarding student employment and faculty publication. On this episode, I speak with Michael Conklin, a scholar who's been measuring bias within the Rankings system, th...