One of the pleasures of doing a website on law and religion is that the topic of church and state comes up everywhere nowadays, even the most unexpected places. Let me give an example. I’m a fan of early music – go ahead, laugh if you want to – and look forward every other Thursday to an email from an organization called the Gotham Early Music Scene announcing concerts around New York City. Yesterday’s email had a plug for a “fitting event” for the 
upcoming “Holiday season,” a fundraiser for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Americans United is producing a concert of music from the time of Thomas Jefferson, complete with readings from letters between him and his “Parisian paramour” – I’m just quoting the announcement, here – Maria Cosway (left). Jefferson, the promoters remind us, was “the primary architect of the Doctrine of Separation of Church and State.” I’m not sure what any of this has to do with the “Holiday season,” but I suppose secularists need something to do around Christmas, too. Considering that Americans United typically spends its “Holiday season” threatening to sue municipalities that might improperly display a shepherd somewhere, its attempt to cash in on Christmas is a bit ironic. I’m pretty sure Jefferson would have found the whole thing embarrassing. He was always discreet about his relationship with Cosway. She was married.
Nemo, “Qu’est-ce que l’Occident?”
I’ve recently been enjoying a gem of a little book by Philippe Nemo (ESCP Europe) ,
Qu’est-ce que l’Occident? (“What is the West?”) (puf 2004). The book is an attempt to describe in what “the West” consists, arriving at 5 distinct contributions: the invention of the city and of science by the Greeks; law and humanism by Rome; the prophetic ethics and eschatological time of the Bible; the Papal Revolution of the 11th to 13th centuries (here there is reliance on Harold Berman); and finally the great liberal democratic revolutions of Europe and the United States.
Here’s a passage from the beginning (6-7) which sets the terms of the project (please forgive the bumpy translation):
What is the West? Does this civilization or this culture — let us not try to distinguish the two terms — have a unity that is deeper than its geopolitical divisions? Does it have common values and institutions which make it one and the same world, distinguishing it for yet some time from the Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Arab-Muslim, or African worlds, or from worlds reputed to be close such as the East-European and Russian Orthodox, Latin America, or Israel? If yes, does a deep solidarity exist within the countries of the West which would justify the political unification, of one kind or another, of this ensemble (the European Union and the American empire being, in this respect, two false good ideas)? And if, in this civilization, certain features of the universal had once been achieved, of which the disappearance or the weakening would affect humanity in its ensemble, should one defend that civilization, not only against military threats but also against the risks of distintegration by the rapid expansion of communitarianisms or cultural blending?
Tunisia: Second Republic or Sixth Caliphate?
Of all the revolutions of the Arab Spring, the overthrow of Ben Ali in Tunisia gave western observers the most reason for optimism. Tunisia, they said, is a secular place with strong cultural ties to Europe; one can legitimately hope that a moderate democracy will take root there, now that the dictator is gone. Maybe that’s a reasonable prediction. This week, however, a leader of the moderate Islamist party that took first place in last month’s elections for a new national assembly raised eyebrows by invoking the revival of the caliphate, the Islamic superstate that Ataturk abolished in 1923. Hamadi Jbeli, likely to be Tunisia’s next Prime Minister, told supporters at a rally that they were living in “a new cycle of civilization,” a “sixth caliphate, God willing.” A party spokesman says Jbeli was merely referring to an end to government corruption, but a secularist party that has been working with the Islamists to form a coalition government has suspended cooperation in protest. “We thought we were going to build a second republic,” a representative of the secular Ettakatol party told Reuters, “not a sixth caliphate.”
NYC Bar Program: Shariah Law and Islamic Finance (Nov. 29)
The NYC Bar Association will host a program, “Shariah Law and Islamic Finance — A Threat to America?,” on Tuesday, November 29, at the Association’s headquarters at 42 W. 44th Street in New York. Speakers include Bernard J. Apperson, Abed Awad, Bernard K. Freamon, Robert E. Michael, and Maria M. Patterson. Details are here.
The Secularization of the Legal Profession
Over at Mirror of Justice, Rob Vischer (St. Thomas – Minnesota) has an interesting post about a presentation he made last week, at a conference at Notre Dame, about the secularization of the legal profession over the last century. As evidence, he gives the very good example of the move from the “‘moral law’” standard of the 1908 ethical canons to today’s more agnostic approach. Although under the 1908 canons lawyers had a duty to provide moral advice to clients, nowadays moral advice is optional, and, in fact, subtly disfavored. The contemporary lawyer must find a way to achieve the client’s ends within the bounds of the law; we leave questions of morality mostly to the client. As it happens, I made a presentation on this very subject last month at the Forum 2000 Conference in Prague, in which I argued that the new approach is not the abdication of morality, exactly, but the substitution of a morality of individualism for one based on consensus moral norms derived from religion. (A video of the talk is here). Rob has a paper in the works that will no doubt be, like all his scholarship, well worth the reading. – MLM
Bonine et al. eds., “Is There a Middle East?”
Here’s a book about the cohesion — cultural, religious, and socio-political
— of the Middle East, Is There a Middle East?: The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept (Stanford UP 2011), edited by Michael E. Bonine, Abbas Amanat, and Michael Ezekiel Gasper. Obviously the book will interest students of the political history of Islam, as well as many others. The publisher’s abstract follows. — MOD
Is the idea of the “Middle East” simply a geopolitical construct conceived by the West to serve particular strategic and economic interests—or can we identify geographical, historical, cultural, and political patterns to indicate some sort of internal coherence to this label? While the term has achieved common usage, no one studying the region has yet addressed whether this conceptualization has real meaning—and then articulated what and where the Middle East is, or is not.
This volume fills the void, offering a diverse set of voices—from political and cultural historians, to social scientists, geographers, and political economists—to debate the possible manifestations and meanings of the Middle East. At a time when geopolitical forces, social currents, and environmental concerns have brought attention to the region, this volume examines the very definition and geographic and cultural boundaries of the Middle East in an unprecedented way.
Abraham Joshua Heschel: Social Activist & Proponent of Interfaith Dialogue
“If you want to know God, sharpen your sense of the human.”
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)
Earlier this year, Susannah Heschel, professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth, published Abraham Joshua Heschel: Essential Writings (Orbis 2011), a collection of works by the volume’s namesake—her father. The elder Heschel—born in Poland into a Hasidic family with a long connection to the rabbinate—escaped Warsaw for the U.S. only weeks before the Third Reich invaded in 1939.
Through his subsequent career, Heschel advocated interfaith understanding and was active in many of the leading social issues of his day—marching with Martin Luther King Jr.; protesting the Vietnam War; observing Vatican II in an official capacity; and challenging the Catholic Church to amend its occasional strains of anti-Semitism, both past and present. The publisher’s abstract follows the jump.
Religion, Testamentary Documents, & End-of-Life Decisions
Wendy S. Goffe, an attorney in trusts and estates at Graham & Dunn PC in Seattle, has published Should I Stay or Should I Go? What Religion Says About Pulling the Plug, a short piece detailing the ways in which religious convictions can affect end-of-life decisions. The article addresses the potential religious obstacles that arise when, say, a believer drafts a living will. For example, to insist doctors not resort to extraordinary measures may or may not be religiously
permissible. (How the title’s reference to The Clash’s hit single—a song describing confusion in a romantic relationship—from their 1982 album Combat Rock, informs this topic is a small mystery.)
The article also addresses the religious dilemmas that might face bereaved families whose loved ones have not left behind clear instructions as to what to do should they become brain dead, or even how to dispose of their bodies in the event of death—an often religiously fraught question. Absent clear direction, families may be powerless to make the decisions they know the injured person would have preferred—or that, according to their own beliefs, they would prefer. Even more complications can arise when end-of-life issues encounter religious belief—some of these are detailed in the abstract, which follows the jump. Likewise, you can read the article in its entirety at Forbes.com here.
McCants, “Founding Gods, Inventing Nations”
Here is a fascinating book that covers a great deal of chronological
territory by William F. McCants (Johns Hopkins), Founding Gods, Inventing Nations: Conquest and Culture Myths From Antiquity to Islam (Princeton UP 2011) about the relationship between religion and cultural formation. It looks really terrific. The publisher’s description follows. — MOD
From the dawn of writing in Sumer to the sunset of the Islamic empire, Founding Gods, Inventing Nations traces four thousand years of speculation on the origins of civilization. Investigating a vast range of primary sources, some of which are translated here for the first time, and focusing on the dynamic influence of the Greek, Roman, and Arab conquests of the Near East, William McCants looks at the ways the conquerors and those they conquered reshaped their myths of civilization’s origins in response to the social and political consequences of empire.
The Greek and Roman conquests brought with them a learned culture that competed with that of native elites. The conquering Arabs, in contrast, had no learned culture, which led to three hundred years of Muslim competition over the cultural orientation of Islam, a contest reflected in the culture myths of that time. What we know today as Islamic culture is the product of this contest, whose protagonists drew heavily on the lore of non-Arab and pagan antiquity.
McCants argues that authors in all three periods did not write about civilization’s origins solely out of pure antiquarian interest–they also sought to address the social and political tensions of the day. The strategies they employed and the postcolonial dilemmas they confronted provide invaluable context for understanding how authors today use myth and history to locate themselves in the confusing aftermath of empire.
Wuthnow, “Red State Religion”
From the well-known sociologist of religion, Robert Wuthnow, comes this
new book, Red State Religion: Faith and Politics in America’s Heartland (Princeton UP 2011). The book looks like an interesting examination of the interaction of religion and politics in the state of Kansas, and potentially much more illuminating than other tendentious accounts. The publisher’s description follows. — MOD
No state has voted Republican more consistently or widely or for longer than Kansas. To understand red state politics, Kansas is the place. It is also the place to understand red state religion. The Kansas Board of Education has repeatedly challenged the teaching of evolution, Kansas voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional ban on gay marriage, the state is a hotbed of antiabortion protest–and churches have been involved in all of these efforts. Yet in 1867 suffragist Lucy Stone could plausibly proclaim that, in the cause of universal suffrage, “Kansas leads the world!” How did Kansas go from being a progressive state to one of the most conservative?
In Red State Religion, Robert Wuthnow tells the story of religiously motivated political activism in Kansas from territorial days to the present. He examines how faith mixed with politics as both ordinary Kansans and leaders such as John Brown, Carrie Nation, William Allen White, and Dwight Eisenhower struggled over the pivotal issues of their times, from slavery and Prohibition to populism and anti-communism. Beyond providing surprising new explanations of why Kansas became a conservative stronghold, the book sheds new light on the role of religion in red states across the Midwest and the United States. Contrary to recent influential accounts, Wuthnow argues that Kansas conservatism is largely pragmatic, not ideological, and that religion in the state has less to do with politics and contentious moral activism than with relationships between neighbors, friends, and fellow churchgoers.
This is an important book for anyone who wants to understand the role of religion in American political conservatism.