Cross & Gavel Podcast

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...

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 S...

"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 u...

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 resou...

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-ra...

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...

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 wh...

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 presuppositio...

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 ge...

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 Sch...

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 it...

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 nomi...

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 influ...

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 (...

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 obs...

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 think...

  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 prais...

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,...

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 "t...

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 r...

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 th...

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...

The confirmation hearings begin Monday, March 20, for Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Trump's nominee to the US Supreme Court. On this episode of Cross & Gavel, Mike Schutt talks with Oklahoma Baptist University professor Christopher McMillion about the process and the politics of the hearings and the future of the Court with a Justice Gorsuch in the place of Justice Scalia, who passed away last yea...

Okay, so it's not "live"-- BUT: Mike Schutt recorded this podcast with Byron Borger, Rockstar Bookman, live and in person at the famous Hearts & Minds Bookstore in Dallastown, PA. Anyone who has ever been to a Christian conference that is serious about readers knows Byron and Beth Borger, owners of Hearts & Minds. The Borgers are particular heroes of the Christian Legal Society and the Coalition f...

As Charlie Clauss reminds us in this podcast, the Book of Common Prayer offers a beautiful invitation (voiced by the minister at the Ash Wednesday service) to enter into Lent: I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word. And, to make a...