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In the forty-seventh episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Michael W. McConnell, the Richard and Mallery Francis Professor of Law, Director of the Constitutional Law Center, and Senior Fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. McConnell starts by offering details concerning how his preparation for the sixteen cases he argued to date before the Supreme Court differs from his preparation for the cases he argued before other appellate courts. Ream and McConnell then discuss how McConnell’s calling to the study and practice of law emerged and how clerking for Skelly Wright with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for William Brennan with the United States Supreme Court impacted McConnell’s vocation as a legal scholar. Their conversation then shifts to McConnell’s most recent book (co-authored with Nathan Chapman), Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience (Oxford University Press, 2023), cases McConnell argued concerning the Establishment Clause, and how the views of the courts—especially the Supreme Court—changed over time concerning this critical component of the Constitution. Ream and McConnell then close by discussing McConnell’s understanding of the academic vocation and how the his service to his students is still what he values the most.
- Nathan S. Chapman and Michael W. McConnell’s Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience (Oxford University Press, 2023)
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
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Our guest is Michael W. McConnell, the Richard and Francis Mallory Professor of Law, Director of the Constitutional Law Center, and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Thank you for joining us.
Michael McConnell: Thanks for inviting me.
Todd Ream: You’ve argued 16 cases before the Supreme Court, and as we’ll explore later in our conversation, you served in Denver for seven years as the judge for the Tenth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. In what ways, if any, is preparing to argue a case before the Supreme Court different than, for example, preparing to argue a case before other appellate courts?
Michael McConnell: That’s a subtle question, Todd. There are lots of differences, but one of the main differences is that an argument in a court of appeals is usually more focused on very specific issues that are put forward by the parties in the briefs, whereas, cases in the Supreme Court, they’re almost all cases on which lower courts have disagreed and most of them have wider ramifications for other areas of the law.
So the counsel has to be much more prepared to address things that are—maybe they weren’t in the briefs. They may be something that they haven’t really been, I mean, you really have to think about a lot more things. So that’s the main difference.
Also, there’s a huge difference between arguing before nine people versus three people. You have a lot more control with three. You can talk to one and then another and nine people, it’s a goat rodeo.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Of the cases you’ve argued before the Supreme Court, which ones, if any, did you find the decision to be the most predictable?
Michael McConnell: Most of them not, but I had one case very early in my career when I was at the Solicitor General’s office, where I got only one question from any of the justices. It was Thurgood Marshall. And the answer to it was yes, your honor. And I sat down at the end of 20 minutes, saying, if you have any, unless you have further questions, I think we’ve made the case and prevailed unanimously.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Perhaps the answer to this will be, have more diversity then to it, in terms of, which ones, then, did you find the decisions most unpredictable?
Michael McConnell: Sometimes very important cases can go in different ways, but one of my favorite, maybe my all time favorite case was called Rosenberger v. University of Virginia. And I represented the student editors of a university publication, a Christian, explicitly Christian, publication called Wide Awake and they were denied the same comparable funding to what would go to other publications that came out from other points of view.
And I was arguing in the court that Christianity is just as legitimate a worldview or point of view as any others. And the free speech clause prohibits a public university from playing favorites that excluding some, like if that had been a socialist paper, they couldn’t have done that and the same would be true of a Christian paper.
The reason it was hard though, is that some of the more conservative justices, I’m thinking especially here of Chief Justice Rehnquist, do not, at that time, didn’t really accept the idea that the First Amendment could compel actual subsidies, as opposed to just preventing punishments. And that would be across the board. So he would hold that it wasn’t a Christian, non-Christian thing. It was like, even a socialist newspaper, could be discriminated against with respect to money. So there were a few of those.
And then there were some on the, a few on the other side of the spectrum, who believe that the establishment clause is like an absolute bar to religious organizations getting any government funds, no matter how on what, even on a neutral and completely equal basis. And I was worried that those two views, which actually have nothing in common, but that they could add up to a majority, on the court.
And so my argument was really designed to try to keep those two sides from coalescing. And we won, five to four. And it’s been, I think, one of the most important precedents for the idea that religious speech is entitled to full free speech protections in America.
Todd Ream: Yeah, no, even from the research and preparation I did, I’ve seen it cited in numerous locations and in search and certainly assume it’s in case law citations in quite a wide variety of places. Thank you.
Of the cases that you’ve argued before the Supreme Court, which ones, if any, do you believe represent areas of the law that need further review, that there’s more exploration that needs to be done perhaps?
Michael McConnell: Well, that’s actually true of quite a number of areas. I’m attracted as a scholar and as a litigator to areas of the law that seem to be confused or not to make very much sense or to contradict historical principles of the founding. And, you know, I tend to concentrate on those, but there are, you know, a number of them. Certainly the Establishment Clause is one that has been in flux a great deal and needs some more work.
But that’s not the only area. There are a lot of others too. The “Takings Clause”, nor, nor shall private property be taken for a public use without just compensation, was largely ignored by the Supreme Court and for decades. And now it’s coming to life and yet there’s a lot more thinking to be done about exactly what that means so. . .
And freedom of association is also an area of, of a great deal of confusion and inconsistency. And in my case, the, the biggest disappointment of my litigating life was a five to four decision about freedom of association, in which I represented a Christian group at a public university law school where this group was denied the right to meet on campus because they would not elect as their leaders, people who weren’t Christian. So the university took the position that a Christian group had to, you know, if an atheist wanted to come and lead the prayer group, that the group had to allow that, which is I think a nonsensical and deeply illiberal decision on their part.
And I was, I was really frankly astonished that the court accepted those arguments. If you had asked me, which was more likely that we would win unanimously or that we would lose by one vote, I would have said it was more likely we would win unanimously. I still think the arguments on the other side make absolutely no sense of any coherent understanding of freedom of association. An association is a gathering of like-minded people, and if you confine yourself to like-minded people, you do not have freedom of association. We didn’t demand that the NAACP admit Ku Klux Klan members.
Todd Ream: Thank you. I want to ask you about some biographical details then now, if I may. You earned an undergraduate degree from Michigan State and then Juris Doctorate from the University of Chicago, where you are also the editor of the University of Chicago’s Law Review. Would you please explain what first attracted you to the study of the law?
Michael McConnell: The truth is I knew very little about it. My parents didn’t know any lawyers. I didn’t know any lawyers growing up. My dad was a chemical engineer so I knew almost nothing. But my two favorite extracurricular activities were, I was a high school debater, I was, in fact, pat myself on the back, I was the state champion high school debater. And then my other leading activity was student journalism. And then I worked in serious newspapers in the summer as a cub reporter. I loved those things. And they led me to think, well, I should probably go into, I mean, law seemed to be related to debate and journalism is obviously related to journalism. And so that’s really what interested me the most about the law.
Now I also studied political philosophy as an undergrad. And I believe somewhat then and even more now, every year that goes by, I believe more firmly that the American legal system, and especially our constitutional system, doesn’t make sense unless it is grounded in, you know, serious principles of political theory. It’s not just arbitrary. It’s that there’s a logic to—the underlying logic—to the very firmament of law. And, you know, I think that had to be part of it as well.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Following graduation, you clerked for Skelly Wright with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and then for William Brennan with the United States Supreme Court. In what ways, if any, did those experiences impact your expectations of the law?
Michael McConnell: Well, let me say both of those gentlemen were leading figures on the left side of the jurisprudential spectrum. And, you know, that’s not where I am. And so what did I learn from them? I learned that people can talk and work together constructively, even when they don’t share political principles and people on the other side of the spectrum are not enemies.
In fact, our system is strengthened when you have, you know, intelligent, well-meaning folks on who do come at issues from different positions. And it worries me today that we’re losing that capacity and that increasingly, people on the left and the right, and actually, I don’t think it’s just that they’re probably 12 different perspectives of different sorts, but that they begin to think of the other side as either stupid or evil. When in fact, most of the time they’re neither of those things. So, you know, I learned a lot from Judge Wright and Justice Brennan, but probably most of all, I learned that we can talk.
Todd Ream: Beautiful lesson. In what ways, then, did those experiences impact your sense of vocation moving forward as it related to the law?
Michael McConnell: I should say, you know, those are privileges, those positions as clerk to the highest levels of the judiciary, that’s a real privilege. And, you know, at this point, those are the resources that I would be drawing on for an entire career. So your question is a little bit like asking a gold miner once he hit the mother load, whether he was going to pursue the gold mining industry.
Todd Ream: Thank you. You’ve served on the faculties of law at the University of Chicago, University of Utah, and now at Stanford. As previously noted, you also served as the judge for the Tenth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. However, you’ve also served as a counselor and consultant for several firms including the Chicago-based firm of Kirkland & Ellis and now the Bay Area-based firm of Wilson Sonsini. How have you navigated your responsibilities to courts, firms, and universities over the course of your career?
Michael McConnell: Well, of course, when I was a judge, I could not do private practice. It would be completely inconsistent. But, you know, there are a number of legal academics who do some legal practice on the side. I want to emphasize “side.” I am a full-time member of the Stanford Law School faculty. I do work through the law firms. It’s just a small portion of my time, which is sort of tacked on to the other, but I think it makes me a better scholar and a better academic because there is a danger in maybe all fields but certainly in law, of becoming too abstract and losing your footing with the real world that we’re supposed to be engaged in.
And to have your hand in some actual conflicts involving real human beings and seeing how the courts really are working, I really think it makes me a different kind of scholar and teacher than I would be otherwise. And I might add also that these firms have been quite generous in indulging my tastes for pro bono, meaning non-paying cases. So, you know, a number of cases that those firms supported were, you know, First Amendment/Free speech cases or cases on, I had a Takings case on behalf of, and someone who was a very substantial small farmer but cannot, would not have been able to go all the way to the Supreme Court with his meritorious case. And then I get really excellent, you know, young associates to work with. So, you know, having these associations with the firms, I think has been, it’s been good for both sides. I don’t view it as taking away from my academic time. I view it as enhancing my academic time.
Todd Ream: From what components of the calling to the law, if any, do you derive the greatest vocational satisfaction? And perhaps you’ve already mentioned some of those in detail but if you could say more, perhaps.
Michael McConnell: I have to say, when I look at my professional life, there is nothing I take more satisfaction in than my students and their careers. I have now been teaching for not quite 40 years, and I have former students who have been White House counsel and members of Congress and, and, and lots of judges and of course, lots of other professors and so forth. I take such pride in them. And, you know, some of them I’ve lost track of and don’t talk to but a significant number I now count as close friends. And I like to think that my real legacy is helping them to get started on their careers.
Now, in addition to that, I think the other thing that has been most satisfying is that in a number of areas of constitutional law, I have taken a position that was contrary to what the Supreme Court had been taking for decades. And that in, in a number of those areas, the court has come at least somewhat closer to the views that I’ve been espousing and that’s very satisfying. And I, I like to think because of course, like most people, I think I’m right. The debts, it makes the country a better place. And by better, what I usually mean is, a freer place.
Todd Ream: When you think back over the course of your career, are there particular mentors to whom you point, such as, you know, perhaps Justice Brennan? Are there individuals who had a significant impact on how you understood your calling to the law and then perhaps, from where you derive the greatest joy in terms of its practice?
Michael McConnell: They come from different aspects of my life. Mentors have come in different models, but in terms of being a lawyer, there were two persons, a generation older than I, that I worked with in the Department of Justice, Paul Bator and Rex Lee, the Deputy Solicitor General and Solicitor General, who really exemplified intelligent, civic-minded advocacy. And I learned a great deal from them.
I also, another government, another one of my early bosses, Michael Horowitz was the General Counsel at the Office of Management and Budget. And every day he woke up, you know, filled with ideas about how he could make the world better using, you know, from the perch that he found himself in. And I so admire that. So those are a few such people.
I should say in terms of scholarship, you know, the teaching law school work that, you know, a couple of people that come to mind are from my, you know, when I, when I was a student at the University of Chicago. And I still am in close touch with both of them. Richard Epstein, and Jeff Stone were just outstanding teachers. And I bet not a month goes by when I’m not consulting with them even now. The book we’re about to talk about, the general editor of the series is Jeff Stone so they were very important to me.
Todd Ream: Are there authors in particular who left a greater imprint on you, in terms of how you think, whether they be from the past or more contemporary times?
Michael McConnell: Well, yes, there’s one writer whom just stands out and that was William F. Buckley, the editor of National Review Magazine, often considered to be the founder of modern American conservatism, which is conservatism, which unites a respect for the moral traditions of America with belief in free market economics and, and, and civil liberty. I’m afraid it’s a view that’s beginning to fray these days.
But when I was in high school, I knew my parents were not particularly political, and I knew nobody with a coherent ideology, and I would get National Review Magazine in the mail and devour it, and I think that that helped shape my worldview, at least politically more than anything else.
My religious worldview was more shaped by a group of people my age whom I encountered shortly after graduating from law school, and we formed a, or they formed, a weekly Bible study group to which my wife and I joined. And we had this young sort of non pious attitude that we would talk through passages in the Bible and we would argue and we would not be pious. And we wouldn’t just, you know, we, we would actually question and make sure we understood. And if we didn’t, if we didn’t get it, we didn’t get it. And we would keep at it. And that really formed my religious worldview, you know, more than any individual.
Todd Ream: That’s wonderful. Thank you. I want to transition now to talking about your own writing, as you echoed just a few minutes ago. To date, you’re the author and editor of nine books, along with the author for numerous articles and book chapters. And that most recent book, book you co-authored with Nathan Chapman and published by Oxford University Press in 2023, is Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience. What compelled you and Nathan Chapman to write that book? We’ll start there.
Michael McConnell: We’re certainly not alone in this, that the Establishment Clause may be the most, most misunderstood part of the Bill of Rights and also the one which is closest to the heart of American culture, the way we think, the way we interact. So the Establishment Clause is about religion. It prohibits the government from making laws establishing a religion. And for a very long time, this idea was captured by people who thought that what that means is that religion is a problem and a democratic republic, and we need to keep it on the sidelines, that religion should be as little influential in public life as possible, that public schools should be pristinely secular and so forth.
That, I am very confident in saying, was not the founder’s vision. The founder’s vision was that religion is extremely important. Maybe, I mean, some of them hostile to it, important means important for good and important for ill, important in different ways because there are all kinds of different religions, but that the problem was not religion. The problem is government control of religion because when government controls religion, it distorts religion and it tries to make us a more homogeneous culture than we actually are.
And Nathan and I believe that the establishment clause was born, you know, primarily I have to, say of the Protestant culture of that day, which doesn’t make it inconsistent with Jewish or Catholic or other worldviews, but I think the essence of, of Protestant thinking at the time of the founding was the belief that all individuals have the capacity and the duty to study the Scriptures for themselves.
This is often called the priesthood of all believers. It’s the idea that, you know, we don’t take our understandings of God and the Scriptures from some authoritative figure, but from reading and understanding ourselves. But that authoritative figure might be, you know, the Pope and Rome, as they would put it. That’s why they broke from the Catholic Church. But it also isn’t, you know, the legislature in, in Albany or the king or the president or Congress, right?
And so the idea is that good religion, proper religion is sincere religion, which is a religious conviction that each believer comes to by virtue of their own study, their own prayer, their own reflection, and what the Establishment Clause was intended to do, it wasn’t to drive religion to the sidelines. It was to take governmental coercion out of the religious landscape.
And our book the first half of the book is about the history of this idea. And then the last half of the book is about a series of important constitutional questions that are still with us today, and how this historical understanding of establishment of religion reflects upon them. So these would be questions like school prayer or accommodation of religion or aid to private schools, including religious schools on an equal basis or public religious symbols, these sorts of questions.
And what we’ve tried to do is bring history to bear, but not in the kind of proof texty way where you say, you know, what did James Madison think about prayer at baseball games? You know, that’s not the right question. The right question is what is the purpose? What is the Establishment Clause doing? What kind of a country is it supposed to shape and then, how do those principles apply to, you know, very practical questions that our government faces today as it has faced for decades?
Todd Ream: Thank you. Yeah, and it’s a book that is of great use to scholars but also to those who are invested in these questions, say laypersons, invested in these questions in terms of how they live and order their lives.
You mentioned that this particular section of the law is perhaps the most misunderstood. What do you believe then are the questions and you were just sort of working along these lines, uh that jurists and then the public need to be asking as we move forward? What would you hope that they would take with them as a result of reading the book?
Michael McConnell: Well, I hope what they take is that the First Amendment is neither pro-religion nor anti-religion. It is in favor of freedom of religion, of individuals to be able to choose for themselves. But that does not mean that the government ignores religion. That usually means that the government needs to be neutral toward religion. Like if the, if the government is supporting, you know, two different educational institutions, private, let’s say they’re, let’s say they’re supporting Harvard, a secular institution, and they’re also supporting Notre Dame, there’s nothing wrong with that.
The thing that minimizes government control is for them to support them equally neutrally without regard to what their religious convictions may be. But for a very long time, justices of the Supreme Court using this metaphor of the wall of separation, between Church and state, many justices took the view that the government could not help, could not assist a religious institution even on a neutral basis.
So one of the early cases that I lost in the Supreme Court, five to four which was later reversed by this. I mean, openly overruled by the Supreme Court, but this had to do with a program from Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, in which the federal government paid money to local school districts to hire specialized teachers in mostly reading and math English as a second language as well, a few other things, but mostly these basics. And then these services were provided not on a class-wide basis but they would bring children who couldn’t read and write or they take them out and give them specialized tutoring. And it was only done in, I mean, this money only went to places, where of economic deprivation.
And then the question became, well, could they send these teachers onto the premises of religious schools, which in practice meant Catholic schools, since there really were no other significant religious school systems. And I thought we would win unanimously because in what way does it offend anybody’s freedom of religion to have specialized English and math tutors coming into the premises of Catholic schools and helping out needy kids? But the Supreme Court held otherwise, held that was unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause.
I think to even describe that case, I think most people of common sense and goodwill are horrified when they think that our United States Supreme Court was that anti-religious and frankly, anti-Catholic was a lot of it. We know from personal letters and other sources that there was deep anti-Catholicism among a number of influential justices in America.
Fortunately, that’s overruled. That’s in the past. I take pride in the possibility that maybe I played some part in convincing people in the academy and in the courts that that was just, it wasn’t just wrong, it was 180 degrees wrong.
Todd Ream: Thank you. I want to ask you now some questions as our time begins to become short about your sense of vocation and how you’ve come to understand as a scholar and practitioner of the law, your calling to the academic vocation as a faculty member there at Stanford, but also as one who served at Utah and Chicago before then.
Michael McConnell: I’m going to say three great things about being an academic. Most of all, the students are wonderful. They mean so much to me. They teach me. They keep me young. They ask questions I haven’t ever thought of before. They argue with me. They are wonderful. And they become, in many cases, lifelong friends.
Secondly, I can work on what I want to work on. And it’s not tasks that come to me. It’s that, you know, I decide courses I want to teach. I decide what books are in articles I want to work on. And I’m able, therefore, to direct my mental energy as to things where I think I might be able to contribute.
And by the way, it’s not all religion. My book before this was about the presidency. The book is entitled The President Who Would Not Be King. And it’s actually similar in structure. The first half of the book is about the history of most of the executive powers. And then the last third of the book maybe is about current controversies. And there, the problem is a little bit different.
I also think there were huge misunderstandings, but the real problem is that people flip sides on structural issues according to whether the president involved with somebody they liked or somebody they didn’t like. And so people who might really defend executive power and all of its scariness, if the president is Barack Obama, suddenly think that, well, no, Donald Trump, of course, he can’t do that. And so this is an attempt to try to find principles that apply across the board. So being able to choose my projects as a second thing.
And then a third dimension, which I almost left out is just the sociability of it. Coming through Stanford, I get to invite speakers. Speakers come, interesting people come, and I get to engage with them, you know, hear their lectures, ask questions, go out to dinner with them, and this is just a great delight. I have to confess, I am completely uninterested in sports, and so I’m very happy to have dinner with people who want to talk about, say, postmodernism or, you know, or the history of Bermuda, rather than, so often the conversations that go on are about sports and I just am not interested. So it provides the kind of sociability that I crave.
Todd Ream: Yeah, now, while President Hutchins at the University of Chicago certainly would have shared your views in an era of time before your arrival there at Hyde Park. You cut your teeth as an undergraduate, though, at Michigan State, which heavily invests in college sports and students are fervent supporters of it.
Michael McConnell: Listen, I went to every home football game when I was there. I went to every home football game when I was there and enjoyed it. And I don’t think I’ve gone to more than two or three football games since I graduated in 1976. I suspect I’m in part, a product of Hutchins’s view because I’m, you know, it was law school, not undergrad, but University of Chicago’s intellectual climate, you know, did profoundly influence me.
But let me say a word for our great state universities. This is one of the things that distinguishes the United States from much of the rest of the world, is we don’t have two great universities. We have 150 great universities. I studied political philosophy at Michigan State from some of the finest thinkers in the world.
You do not have to go and in many ways, I think our most elite universities may be the most problematic these days. I mean, why is it that anti-Semitic protests flourish at Stanford and Harvard and Columbia, and I don’t think they’re having them at Michigan State. So there’s some deep corruption at the very elite end of our educational system. And so maybe going to Michigan State was a good move for me and for so many others too. And it’s not just Michigan State. There are great universities all over this country.
Todd Ream: I want to ask about what relationship you perceive that one sense of the academic vocation then shares for some scholars who are then called to serve as public intellectuals, intersect with the public, the wider issues of the day and provide resources, opportunities, forums for discussion, that go well beyond the gates of college campuses.
Michael McConnell: So I don’t really know this term public intellectual. I think at its best it means people who do have a serious understanding of a difficult area and are able to, and it’s a difficult area that’s important to the public, to real people and are able to explain it in a way which is both easier to understand, but also accurate.
I fear that a lot of people who are regarded as public intellectuals are really just opinionated bloviators, who are not actually helping to educate the public, but are just spreading distortions and partisan advocacy. So I suspect this is no different today than it was back in ancient Greece or any other time now. In Greece, they were called sophists. They were people that Socrates railed against.
Todd Ream: They didn’t have access to the technological resources that we have today at fingertips perhaps it made the spread of these challenges a little slower but yeah.
Michael McConnell: I was just going to say, it is true that we can now communicate much more easily with a large audience and much of that is good, in that you can have a wider range of people speaking. It democratizes public discussion, but it also means that people who don’t have a clue what they’re talking about, are able to pop off. And when you go on the internet, you don’t know whether this is a person worth paying attention to or not so technology is both a good and a bad. And as artificial intelligence assumes greater importance, I strongly suspect that the good and the bad are going to be equaling, are going to be balancing each other out.
Todd Ream: Thank you. For our final question then for our conversation today, what responsibility, if any, do you think the Church has for cultivating an appreciation for the academic vocation as it would exist in fields such as law, but you know, as well, medicine, engineering, business? What responsibility, if any, do you think it has for cultivation?
Michael McConnell: That’s a very difficult question. Believe in different models. So I think that it is good that there are Church-related colleges and certainly high schools and elementary schools even more so. I think that it’s good that the Church doesn’t dominate all of them. I think it’s good that there are some places that are, you know, quite secular.
One of my children went to a very secular small liberal arts college ,where by far the largest student organization was InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. And there’s something to be said for that model too, because the students were worshiping and lifting each other up and figuring out how to navigate a very secular world without having anybody else sort of telling them what to think or how to do it. And they were figuring it out for themselves. And that I think is really good.
At Stanford, we have a number of student religious groups. I think that’s quite good. There’s a very large active one at the law school. There’s also an organization at Stanford called the Zephyr Institute which brings in speakers about, you know, at a very high intellectual level, about philosophy and art and history and theology and so forth.
They are affiliated with the Church sort of, I think I would call them a para church organization, certainly a Christian organization, independent of the university, but able to operate within the university. That seems like a really good model to me. I have never taught or attended a religious institution, so, you know, I may not be the right person to think about all of these things.
I tend to believe in the idea that Christians should be out in the world rather than just talking to themselves. You know, and that’s, I think, what bothers me is the extent to which a sort of modern secularistic culture tries to drive that out. I don’t want the university to help, but I sure would like the university to get out of the way.
Todd Ream: Thank you very much. Our guest has been Michael W. McConnell. The Richard and Frances Mallory Professor of Law, Director of the Constitutional Law Center, and a Senior Fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.
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Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
