Law and religion, as an academic discipline, seems to be on the cusp of something new and different. It’s not just recent SCOTUS decisions that overturn 50 years of precedent, although that’s part of it. Crucially, Americans’ understanding of religion itself seems to be changing. And the polarization between traditional believers and more secularly-minded Americans continues to grow. So it’s not surprising that scholars (like my former colleague Marc, e.g.) are beginning to wonder just what “law and religion” will mean in the future as an academic subject. A new book from Edward Elgar, Rethinking Law and Religion, argues for a new, critical and interdisciplinary conception of the field. The author is Russell Sandberg (Cardiff University), and the publisher’s description follows. Thanks to our friend Paul Horwitz for drawing our attention to this.
This incisive book delineates the development of Law and Religion as a sub-discipline, critically reflecting on the author’s own role in constructing the field. It develops a subversive social systems theory in order to take both law and religion seriously and to challenge them equally.
Russell Sandberg crafts a new agenda for academic scrutiny of the interaction between religion and the law. Sandberg criticises scholarship to date for focusing on the legal regulation of religion, which reduces the field to an academic sub-discipline in Law Schools. Instead, Sandberg argues for a re-conceptualisation of Law and Religion as an interdisciplinary interaction, comparing it to fields such as legal history and legal geography. He contends that Law and Religion should take on a critical perspective, interrogating the content, nature and purpose of law, and drawing from literature on law and race and law and gender.
Provocative, personal and sometimes surprising, Rethinking Law and Religion is an illuminating read for students and scholars of law and society, legal theory, and sociology of law and philosophy.