Our Lady of Perpetual Surf
In the contemporary annals of Catholic apparitions, the Virgin Mary has typically appeared in response to prayer, a conversion or a plea for healing. But until Good Friday 2011, she had never …
Civic Engagement
Brazil’s Sleeping Giant: The Protestant Church
Driving through Rio de Janeiro last week, I saw the phrase “O Gigante Acordou” or “The Giant Woke Up” scrawled across dozens of concrete walls, highway overpasses and World Cup-related construction sites. …
Addressing Issues of Justice and Race after Trayvon Martin Case
Rev. Mark Whitlock, executive director of the USC Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement, published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Sentinel on the George Zimmerman trial verdict. “How do people living …
Religion and Public Diplomacy
Religion and Public Diplomacy Philip Seib, editor (Palgrave Macmillan: 2013) Religion and Public Diplomacy discusses the volatile consequences that can be a result of mixing religion, new communications technologies …
Religion and the Los Angeles Mayoral Race
CRCC Research Director Richard Flory and Reverend Mark Whitlock have appeared in a Neon Tommy article where they discuss the religious implications of the current Mayoral Race in Los Angeles. An excerpt …
Breaking Down the Wall between Church and State
CRCC Research Associate Rebecca Sager has co-authored an article published in the Oxford Journal of Church and State. The paper explores the role of government in the promotion or facilitation of religion …
The Faith-Based Initiative: 17 Years of Making Religion an Official Part of Government Seem Normal
Many have forgotten about the faith-based initiative by now. The once contentious and controversial set of policy initiatives, created by the conservative evangelical movement with the purported goal of encouraging religious organizations …
Syria stains the world’s conscience
This commentary was originally published in The Financial Times. When Libya’s Muammer Gaddafi threatened to go street to street and house to house to snuff out his opponents, Barack Obama addressed Americans …
L.A.’s First Jewish Mayor?
Since the mid 1950s Los Angeles has been the second largest Jewish community in the United States, but has never had a Jewish mayor. New York, by contrast, elected its first Jewish …
Obama offers compromise on birth control health coverage
The Obama administration has proposed a compromise over the mandated coverage of contraceptives in the Affordable Healthcare Act that was approved by Congress in 2012. Officials state that the proposed mandate will …