M. Christian Green

M. Christian Green is a scholar, teacher, researcher, writer, and editor working in the fields of law, religion, ethics, human rights, and global affairs.  She holds degrees from Georgetown University in history and government, Emory University in law and theology, and the University of Chicago in religious ethics. Her research interests include law and religion, human rights, religious freedom, religion and world affairs, and global ethics.

Research & Teaching:   Green has been a researcher at the Religion, Culture, and Family Project at the University of Chicago, the Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith, and Ethics in Chicago, and the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. At the CSLR she directed research on Africa and Europe for the “Law, Religion, and Human Rights” project and was the principal investigator and blog and website editor for the project on “Sharia, Family, and Democracy: Religious Norms and Family Law in Pluralistic Democratic States.” During the 2010-2011 academic year, she was a visiting research fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, conducting research on “Religion, Rights, and Recognition of Identity.” She has taught at DePaul University, Harvard Divinity School, and the Candler School of Theology.

Current Projects: Green is currently a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, where she is special content editor and a general co-editor at the Journal of Law and Religion, and an associate editor at the CSLR’s Canopy Forum digital journal. Green is also editor and publications manager for the African Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ACLARS) and served from 2016-2018 as academic consultant and social media editor for the Commonwealth Initiative on Freedom of Religion or Belief (CIFoRB).

Green is an active volunteer for the League of Women Voters of Louisiana, where she was elected Vice President for the 2021-2023 term, also chairing the Voting Rights Committee. She received the LWV of Louisiana’s 2020 Advocacy Award for work on voting rights in Louisiana in the 2020 election season. Green was also the recipient of the League of Women Voters of Lafayette‘s Thetis Cusimano Award in 2021 for work on redistricting and fair maps and led the Louisiana team that was honored as “Redistricting Champions” in the People Powered Fair Maps initiative by the League of Women Voters of the United States at its 2022 National Convention. On March 5, 2023, Green was elected President of the LWV of Louisiana at the 2023 State Convention on the theme of “EnviroCivics: Climate, Communities, and Democracy.”

Recent Publications:

JUST PUBLISHED!!! “‘Go and Do Likewise’: Law, Christianity, and Good Samaritanism,” in Rafael Domingo Osle and Gary S. Hauk, eds. Faith in Law, Law in Faith: Essays in Honor of John Witte, Jr. (Leiden: Brill, April 4, 2024), 165-183.

JUST PUBLISHED!!! “Housing Rights, Citizen Rights, and Human Dignity: The Case of Voting While Unhoused,” Canopy Forum/ Center for the Study of Law and Religion, March 20, 2024.

With Massimiliano Montini. “Christianity, Law, and the Ecological Crisis,” in The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Law, eds. John Witte, Jr. and Rafael Domingo Osle (New York: Oxford University Press, December 8, 2023), 649-663.

African Conceptions of Human Dignity, edited with Brett G. Scharffs and Simeon O. Ilesanmi (Stellenbosch: African Sun Media, December 10, 2023).

“Ghosts of Law and Religion: The Paranormal Fascination and the Bounds of Knowledge and Experience,” Canopy Forum/Center for the Study of Law and Religion, November 10, 2023.

“From Crisis to Kairos: The ‘Green Patriarch’ and Environmental Law,” in The Legal Thought of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, ed. Norman Doe (London: Routledge, November 3, 2023), 107-117.

“Plessy, Prince and Me: Law, Religion, and the Quest for Racial Justice,” Canopy Forum/Center for the Study of Law and Religion, February 22, 2023.

Law, Religion, Health and Healing in Africa, edited with Faith Kabata and Fortune Sibanda (Stellenbosch: African Sun Media, 2022). Read the introduction.

“Sovereigns, Exceptions, and ‘Shadow Dockets’: Law, Religion, and States of Emergency“, Canopy Forum/Center for the Study of Law and Religion, December 14, 2022.

With Silas Allard, Vincent Lloyd, and David True, “Race, Equality, Citizenship, and Belonging: Reading James Baldwin and Wong Kim Ark,” Journal of Law and Religion (August 5, 2022).

With Silas Allard, Vincent Lloyd, and David True, “Race, Equality, Citizenship, and Belonging: Reading James Baldwin and Wong Kim Ark,” Political Theology (July 4, 2022).

“Law,” in The Encyclopedia of Religious Ethics, William Schweiker et al. (eds.) (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2022), ch. 130, 1166-1174.

“Editorial: Law, Religion and the Fragility of Democracy,” Journal of Law and Religion 36:3 (January 2022): 5-8.

Law, Religion and the Family in Africa, edited with Faith Kabata (Stellenbosch: African Sun Media, December 2021). Read the introduction.

“Abortion, Dobbs, and Foreign Law at the U.S. Supreme Court,” Canopy Forum/Center for the Study of Law and Religion, November 23, 2021.

“Religious Minorities and Religious Freedom at Home–and in Afghanistan,” Canopy Forum/Center for the Study of Law and Religion, September 2, 2021.

“Mask Mandates and the Uses of the Law,” Canopy Forum/ Center for the Study of Law and Religion, May 10, 2021.

“Of Bans, Sin, and Reconciliation,” Canopy Forum/ Center for the Study of Law and Religion, April 15, 2021.

“Law, Religion, and Same-Sex Relations in Africa” (introduction to article symposium) Journal of Law and Religion, 36:1 (April 2021), 67-71.

“The Chorister’s Tale: Religious Freedom Analogies in the COVID Pandemic,” Canopy Forum/Center for the Study of Law and Religion, March 10, 2021.

Coming Soon:

Law, Religion, and Reconciliation in Africa (forthcoming May 2024).