Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Announcing the Libertas Project

I’m delighted to post the following announcement about the “Libertas Project,” two workshops of which will occur this summer at Villanova Law School under the able direction of Associate Dean Michael Moreland. I’ll be participating as a moderator in the religious liberty workshop together with my friend, Zak Calo. See below for the call for applications to participate.

The Libertas Project at Villanova University School of Law is seeking applications for participation in its 2014 summer workshops on religious and economic freedom. The project will seek to bring together concerns about religious freedom and economic freedom in a framework that situates both topics amid a larger conversation about freedom, law, and virtue. The Libertas Project aspires to broaden the academic and public appreciation for religious freedom as a human good, while also bringing the insights of religion to bear on conversations about economic freedom as an essential component of a free society. A more detailed description of the project’s inspiration and goals is below. The Libertas Project is made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

To address these issues of religious and economic freedom, the Libertas Project will host a series of summer workshops at Villanova University School of Law. Each workshop will be comprised of approximately 20 participants drawn primarily from law but also welcoming scholars from related fields (philosophy, political science, religion, business, and economics, for example) as well as judges, policymakers, and journalists. The workshops will be structured around a set of common readings on each topic with group discussions, break-out sessions, and meals in order to foster scholarly networks and collaborative projects among the participants.

The dates for the 2014 summer workshops are July 7-9 on economic freedom and July 14-16 on religious freedom. Participants in the workshops will each receive an honorarium of $1500.

The workshop moderators will be Thomas Smith (Villanova University) and Mary Hirschfeld (Villanova University) on economic freedom, and Marc DeGirolami (St. John’s University) and Zachary Calo (Valparaiso University) on religious freedom.

The workshops will take place at Villanova University School of Law. Villanova is located 12 miles west of Philadelphia, the fifth-largest city in the United States and the second-largest city on the East Coast. The campus is situated on Philadelphia’s suburban Main Line, and Villanova is easily accessible by train, plane, car, or regional public transportation.

Due to limited travel funds, participants are asked to obtain travel funding from their home institutions, but travel scholarships are also available.

To apply, please submit a brief statement of interest (and specifying whether you are interested in the workshop on economic freedom or religious freedom) with a current c.v. to the project leader, Michael Moreland, Vice Dean and Professor of Law at Villanova University School of Law (Moreland@law.villanova.edu) by April 30, 2014.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Libertas Project addresses two topics related to freedom in the context of law and religion in American public life: religious freedom and economic freedom.

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Grubiak, “White Elephants on Campus: The Decline of the University Chapel in America, 1920–1960”

Next month, Notre Dame will publish White Elephants on Campus: The dddDecline of the University Chapel in America, 1920–1960, by Margaret M. Grubiak (Villanova University). The publisher’s description follows.

 In White Elephants on Campus: The Decline of the University Chapel in America, 1920–1960, Margaret M. Grubiak persuasively argues, through a careful selection of case studies, that the evolution of the architecture of new churches and chapels built on campuses reveals the shifting and declining role of religion within the mission of the modern American university. According to Grubiak, during the first half of the twentieth century, university leaders tended to view architecture as a means of retaining religion within an increasingly scientific and secular university. Initially, the construction of large-scale chapels was meant to advertise religion’s continued importance to the university mission. Lavish neo-Gothic chapels at historically Protestant schools, although counter to traditional Protestant imagery, were justified as an appeal to students’ emotions. New cathedral-style libraries and classroom buildings also re-imagined a place for religion on campuses no longer tied to their founding religious denominations.

Despite such attempts to reframe religion for the modern university, Grubiak shows that by the 1960s the architectural styles of new religious buildings had changed markedly. Postwar university chapels projected a less distinct image, with their small scale and intentionally nondenominational focus. By the mid-twentieth century, the prewar chapels had become “white elephants.” They are beautiful, monumental buildings that nevertheless stand outside the central concerns of the modern American university. Religious campus architecture had lost its value in an era where religion no longer played a central role in the formation and education of the American student.

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Andes, “The Vatican and Catholic Activism in Mexico and Chile: The Politics of Transnational Catholicism, 1920–1940”

This month, Oxford published The Vatican and Catholic Activism in mmmMexico and Chile: The Politics of Transnational Catholicism, 1920-1940, by Stephen J. C. Andes (Louisiana State University). The publisher’s description follows.

As in Europe, secular nation building in Latin America challenged the traditional authority of the Roman Catholic Church in the early twentieth century. In response, Catholic social and political movements sought to contest state-led secularisation and provide an answer to the ‘social question’, the complex set of problems associated with urbanisation, industrialisation, and poverty. As Catholics mobilised against the secular threat, they also struggled with each other to define the proper role of the Church in the public sphere. This study utilizes recently opened files at the Vatican pertaining to Mexico’s post-revolutionary Church-state conflict known as the Cristero Rebellion (1926-1929). However, looking beyond Mexico’s exceptional case, the work employs a transnational framework, enabling a better understanding of the supranational relationship between Latin American Catholic activists and the Vatican. To capture this world historical context, Andes compares Mexico to Chile’s own experience of religious conflict. Unlike past scholarship, which has focused almost exclusively on local conditions, Andes seeks to answer how diverse national visions of Catholicism responded to papal attempts to centralize its authority and universalize Church practices worldwide.

The Politics of Transnational Catholicism applies research on the interwar papacy, which is almost exclusively European in outlook, to a Latin American context. The national cases presented illuminate how Catholicism shaped public life in Latin America as the Vatican sought to define Catholic participation in Mexican and Chilean national politics. It reveals that Catholic activism directly influenced the development of new political movements such as Christian Democracy, which remained central to political life in the region for the remainder of the twentieth century.