 Well, I'm an interdisciplinary addict and I like interdisciplinary conversations. I have a particular way of framing them around practical questions. But when I began to realize that around this table would be 15 or 16 Emory University professors from not only law but religion and theology, not only Christianity but Islam, Hinduism, Greek religions, I began to think that that was right down my alley. What I hope is a respect for the different voices and the different disciplines that they represent. I tend to think that good practical thinking, and by that I mean thinking that goes across policy issues, moral issues, yes, legal issues, anything that tries to answer the question what we should do in this area or that area is very complex and requires thinking in many different dimensions and levels. I didn't preach my point of view so much as to try to communicate an atmosphere of respect for the different possible contributions and then try to help people see how these different contributions might fit together. It'll be seven or so books. Only one of those books would have been written. The other books have been pulled out of me by virtue of the synergism and the momentum of that program. I hope to bring law to the attention of the American religions and American churches more than it has. Law has been thought to be something that was not fundamental to Christianity especially in liberal Protestant churches. A very important truth, salvation by grace alone, justification by faith, began to be very central to these religions in the 50s and 60s and 70s, but the relationship between that and law began to decline. It's true. Classic Protestantism said you're not saved by the law, but after that was said it came back and took the law very seriously because they knew the law which may not save you needed to be ordered both in church and society. That last half I think had been kind of neglected. So I hope to energize that more in some of the theological disciplines. On the other hand, I hope that law and other related human sciences can see that religion still has something vital to contribute to contemporary conversations especially around sex marriage and family issues. That is not something that is just for the church. It has relevance to the church, but theology, Christian theology has relevance to the broader society as well. Well the one thing is the complexity of these marriage traditions. You'll hear time and time again both in law and in the general population the marriage is a religious thing or it is a private thing. And yes, it is private in the sense it means a lot to people. Yes, it's private in the sense that individual initiatives on the part of people should be respected. Yes, it's religious in that in every society religions have a lot to do with shaping and forming it. By no means has it been only religious and only private. There are big stakes. It's an institution and there are big stakes in the regulation of marriage determining who's married who's not married, who's accountable for the children and who's not accountable for the children, who gets the property and who doesn't get the property. And philosophy, law has been concerned about these issues because if you let them fall apart big social issues emerge. So many ways we learned that although it's religious and personal marriage family issues awful lot like driving an automobile. Meaning that you regulate that because there are big material psychological and health issues at stake in it. And so I think the documentation of that and outlining how societies everywhere have done this even if they didn't have good systems of law. But tried to leave these decisions and the regulation at the more local and maybe even tribal level. They were there and have always been there and the religion is a dimension of that and is something that surrounds and energizes and balances it but it doesn't exhaust what's there. I think it's the really important thing that we have learned. Well I think the great thing that the center has done and one of the great things that John Witte has done is to say that in order to get this conversation going, in order to bring law more to the attention of practical religion, in order to bring religion more to the attention of law you've got to do a lot of history. You have to see how they interact in the past and as you move into the future and I think the law and religion program and the interdisciplinary studies on the law and religion that go on at Emory have always wanted to move into the future and has on many issues but it will move into the future even more. It'll begin to address current and and emerging issues all the more but it'll do so with a strong foundation in historical resources. History that has been forgotten for the most part both by legal scholars and by the churches and practical religion in American life can't go forward well and solidly if you can't recall that history and so I think that's been a major contribution of and also a major influence on me. I've read more history since I got connected. Well I think the law and religion work is relevant for many reasons. Let's just take one of the most dramatic ones right now and that is the world conflict over what we call terrorism. That conflict is significantly a conflict about alternative visions of the relationship of religion to the law of a society. More fundamentalist Islamic thinkers have a particular view of Sharia which says that all aspects of society even modern society still need to be guided directly by particular interpretations of Sharia. Sex, marriage and family issues are very central to measure that conflict. I think that's one example about how as the pace of life changes, as modernization spreads, reproductive technology issues spread, many religions both Western and Eastern Christianity and non-Christian have both contributions to make to these deliberations but also are going to have concerns and reactions and sometimes quite negative. So you have a worldwide rise of fundamentalism in many different religions. That is one of the most crucial ways of looking at the importance of this discussion. You've got to do more work along. You've got to look at what these religions are really about. You've got to do historical work. You've got to bring different kinds of scholars into conversation. You have to create a culture of dialogue and gradual consensus that takes the place of conflict and sometimes even armed conflict. Reproductive technology issues are going to be enormous in the future and you could just spin out issues pertaining to that both at the level of American law and international law endlessly. Different countries are going different directions on this. There are different patterns. I think most people think that the United States would basically have a kind of an open market attitude toward the field of reproductive technology. If you've got the money and you can find a doctor and you can find the science, you can pretty much do it in most areas. Not every country is taking that point of view. Furthermore, because it does take science and money to do a lot of this stuff, it just seems to be intuitively wrong for a certain percentage of the population to be able to take advantage of some of these breakthroughs and the rest of the world not to. So I think it's a global issue. It's a national issue. It's a personal family issue and it's extremely complex. It dovetails nicely with the range of issues we have been confronting in the sex marriage and family but there's a lot of details that we haven't gone to yet. The work at Emory has made enormous contributions to church-state religion and society type issues. That has happened, is happening and will continue to happen because those issues are going to be even all the more dynamic. Especially dynamic in view of how much more complicated our religious perspective is going to be. It's not just going to be Christianity and law in the state. It's not just going to be church and law in the state. It's going to be, it has been and it's going to be even more so with synagogue and mosque and Hindu temple. The pluralism of American religious life is going to become more and more dynamic. For me it was very instructive to interact with our Jewish Islamic scholars or people who were experts in those religions. I consider myself a liberal Protestant. I tend to work in ethics and practical theology. I tend to do interdisciplinary work but it was often very interesting and surprising to hear from those religions especially how much more they value law. Law is not something over there that you give to the state and those religions either in Judaism or Islam. Law is something that the state may have but it's built solidly into what these religions are about and following the law and keeping the law is extremely important.