Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami · 2 Comments

Strategic Conversion

This is a rather odd news item about several al-Qaida records which have recently been discovered released.  Among the letters and other paraphernalia (including an exhortation to assassinate the President in order to profit from the asserted incompetence of the Vice President) is the speculation of one Adam Gadahn, “American al-Qaida spokesman” (I had not realized that there were national spokespeople for terrorist organizations), who said this about Catholicism in Ireland:

I noticed the sympathy of the Irish people to the Palestinian issue, and the soft treatment by the Irish Judicial system of Muslims accused of terrorism, and also not participating with its troops in [President George W.] Bush’s Crusade wars . . . . The other matter is the increasing anger in Ireland towards the Catholic Church after exposing a number of sex scandals . . . . The people there are moving towards secularism, after it was the most religious of atheist Europe, and why do not we face them with Islam?

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Liveblogging the RALS Conference

I’m posting today from the biannual Conference of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools (RALS), hosted this year by Sam Levine at Touro. The first panel this morning, on which I participated, was titled “The Place of Law and Religion Institutes in the Law School and University.” The panel made clear how many such institutes exist in American law schools and how diverse are their interests. I spoke about our Center for Law and Religion here at St. John’s. Our center focuses on religion as a legal and sociological phenomenon and treats the subject from a broadly interfaith and comparative perspective. Elizabeth Schiltz, director of the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy at St. Thomas, described her center as having a slightly different focus, rooted more specifically in the Catholic intellectual and legal tradition. Elizabeth Clark, associate director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at BYU, described her center’s primary concern as promoting religious freedom around the world. Of course, there is a lot of overlap in the matters the centers cover. Yet the diversity of focus is a great sign that law and religion is a growth area in American law schools and that there is plenty of work to go around.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

The National Day of Prayer

Today, by federal statute, is the National Day of Prayer. Many of our foreign readers will find it odd, but the U.S. Code requires that the President issue an annual proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a day on which Americans “may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.” Note the phrasing. The President is not to direct people to pray — that would be unconstitutional, obviously — or even to request that they pray. He is required only to designate the day as one on which Americans may pray. And meditate. But not “pray or meditate.”  Lots of lawyers’ hours must have gone into all this.

Anyway. Although the statute only dates from the 1950s, the practice of declaring national days of prayer goes back to President Washington. Consistent with the American tradition of public religion, the prayers have tended to be non-sectarian. In fact, a group calling itself the “National Day of Prayer Task Force,” which promotes observance of the day around the country, highlights its  “Judeo-Christian” character. On Monday, President Obama issued this year’s proclamation, which invites Americans to pray and “give thanks for our democracy that . . . protects the religious freedom of all people to pray, worship, or abstain according to the dictates of their conscience.”

That’s about as inclusive as you can get in a National Day of Prayer proclamation, but not everyone is satisfied. The Freedom from Religion Foundation brought suit a while ago to declare the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional. The Seventh Circuit dismissed the case on standing grounds (no injury). This year, the American Humanist Association has declared a “National Day of Reason” to compete with the “National Day of Prayer.” I suppose reasonable theists can observe both.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Levy, “Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority at the End of the Middle Ages”

An absolutely wonderful looking book dealing with religion and political and legal authority round about the 15th century by Ian Christopher Levy (Providence College), Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority at the End of the Middle Ages (Notre Dame 2012).  And note some very similar issues of textual interpretation which we see in our own day.  The publisher’s description follows.

All participants in late medieval debates recognized Holy Scripture as the principal authority in matters of Catholic doctrine. Popes, theologians, lawyers—all were bound by the divine truth it conveyed. Yet the church possessed no absolute means of determining the final authoritative meaning of the biblical text—hence the range of appeals to antiquity, to the papacy, and to councils, none of which were ultimately conclusive. Authority in the late medieval church was a vexing issue precisely because it was not resolved.

Ian Christopher Levy’s book focuses on the quest for such authority between 1370 and 1430, from John Wyclif to Thomas Netter, thereby encompassing the struggle over Holy Scripture waged between Wycliffites and Hussites on the one hand, and their British and Continental opponents on the other. Levy demonstrates that the Wycliffite/Hussite “heretics” and their opponents—the theologians William Woodford, Thomas Netter, and Jean Gerson—in fact shared a large and undisputed common ground. They held recognized licenses of expertise, venerated tradition, esteemed the church fathers, and embraced Holy Scripture as the ultimate authority in Christendom. What is more, they utilized similar hermeneutical strategies with regard to authorial intention, the literal sense, and the appeal to the fathers and holy doctors in order to open up the text. Yet it is precisely this commonality, according to Levy, that rendered the situation virtually intractable; he argues that the erroneous assumption persists today that Netter and Gerson spoke for “the church,” whereas Wyclif and Hus sought to destroy it.

Levy’s sophisticated study in historical theology, which reconsiders the paradigm of heresy and orthodoxy, offers a necessary adjustment in our view of church authority at the turn of the fifteenth century.

Posted on by Michael Helfand

New Journal: Journal of Law, Religion and State

For those who haven’t seen it yet, the first issue of the fantastic new law & religion journal – the Journal of Law, Religion and State – just came out.  The JLRS has an impressive editorial board and describes its focus as follows:

The Journal of Law Religion and State is an international forum for the study and discussion of the interactions between these domains. It is focusing on the following areas: religion and state; legal and political aspects of all religious traditions; comparative research of various religious legal systems and their interrelations.

The first issues includes articles from Michael Walzer (Princeton), Mark Rosen (Chicago-Kent), Jeff Spinner-Halev (UNC), and Jonathan Fox (Bar-Ilan).  The JLRS will undoubtedly serve as a great forum for exchange on the intersection of law & religion.

Posted on by Michael Helfand

Religiously Affiliated Law Schools Conference at Touro Law Center

Starting this afternoon, Touro Law Center will be hosting the 2012 Religiously Affiliated Law Schools Conference, which will explore “The Place of Religion in the Law School, the University, and the Practice of Law.”  The conference was organized by Samuel Levine who put together a fantastic program. Highlights of the program include keynote speaker Nathan Lewin, plus presentations by some of the very best in the law & religion field (including CLR Forum’s own Mark Movsesian and Pepperdine University School of Law’s Dean Deanell Tacha).

If you’re able to go (which I regretfully am not), I’d strongly recommend attending this impressive event.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

State Legislature Moves Against Vanderbilt’s “All-Comers” Policy for Student Groups

Last night, by comfortable margins, the Tennessee legislature passed a bill prohibiting Vanderbilt University’s “all-comers” policy for student groups. The policy, which requires that student groups open leadership positions to all Vanderbilt students, even students who disagree with the groups’ core beliefs, has sparked a dispute between the university and some student religious organizations, which argue that the policy effectively dilutes their religious identity. The bill initially banned all-comers policies only at state universities, but an amendment extended the bill’s  coverage to private institutions that receive more than $24 million in state subsidies — which just happens to be the amount Tennessee gives Vanderbilt. The bill does not actually cut off  funding, for the moment, but sponsors threaten to do so in future if Vanderbilt does not change its policy. The bill now goes to Governor Bill Haslam for signature.

A couple of terms ago, in CLS v. Martinez, the Supreme Court held that a similar all-comers policy at the University of California-Hastings was constitutional. As I’ve argued before, though, even if an all-comers policy is constitutional, it’s very misguided. The point of campus diversity is to allow the expression of various viewpoints. It’s hard to see how a group can express a viewpoint if it cannot choose leaders who share its beliefs.

Posted on by Michael Helfand

Religion and the New Multiculturalism

Thanks to Mark and Marc for having me here this month.  I’m hoping to blog a bit this month about the competing claims of law and religion in the age of, what I’ve taken to calling, the “new multiculturalism.”  What I’m thinking of here is a growing set of conflicts between law and religion where religious individuals and religious groups are less concerned about recognition and symbolism and more concerned about securing autonomy from the state.  So, for example, I would contend that questions about prayer in public schools and religious symbols on government property have taken a back seat to debates over the ministerial exception (Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC) and the role of religious law within U.S. courts (e.g. the recent wave of proposed sharia-bans).

One of the things that I’ve found interesting about this focus is how interdisciplinary the inquiries have been.  Addressing this new multiculturalism invariably requires dabbling in everything from arbitration to international law to political theory.  And similarly, in my recent Litigating Religion piece, I’ve been working a bit on the options for resolving disputes that turn on religious doctrine and practice, a question that requires thinking about the alternative dispute resolution paradigms of both public law and private law.  I’m looking  forward  to discussing this wide range of issues here at the CLR Forum this month.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Dyer, “Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition”

A very interesting looking book by Justin Buckley Dyer (Missouri), which in part defends the traditional view of the relationship between natural law and opposition to slavery against recent revisionist attacks: Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition (CUP 2012).  The publisher’s description follows.

In Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition, Justin Buckley Dyer provides a succinct account of the development of American antislavery constitutionalism in the years preceding the Civil War. Within the context of recent revisionist scholarship, Dyer argues that the theoretical foundations of American constitutionalism – which he identifies with principles of natural law – were antagonistic to slavery. Still, the continued existence of slavery in the nineteenth century created a tension between practice and principle. In a series of case studies, Dyer reconstructs the constitutional arguments of prominent antislavery thinkers such as John Quincy Adams, John McLean, Abraham Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass, who collectively sought to overcome the legacy of slavery by emphasizing the natural law foundations of American constitutionalism. What emerges is an understanding of American constitutional development that challenges traditional narratives of linear progress while highlighting the centrality of natural law to America’s greatest constitutional crisis.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Bellah & Joas (eds.), “The Axial Age and Its Consequences”

Here is a collection of essays edited by the great sociologists of religion Robert Bellah and Hans Joas that is likely to be of great interest to law and religion scholars, The Axial Age and Its Consequences (HUP 2012).  The publisher’s description follows.

The first classics in human history—the early works of literature, philosophy, and theology to which we have returned throughout the ages—appeared in the middle centuries of the first millennium BCE. The canonical texts of the Hebrew scriptures, the philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle, the Analects of Confucius and the Daodejing, the Bhagavad Gita and the teachings of the Buddha—all of these works came down to us from the compressed period of history that Karl Jaspers memorably named the Axial Age.

In The Axial Age and Its Consequences, Robert Bellah and Hans Joas make the bold claim that intellectual sophistication itself was born worldwide during this critical time. Across Eurasia, a new self-reflective attitude toward human existence emerged, and with it an awakening to the concept of transcendence. From Axial Age thinkers we inherited a sense of the world as a place not just to experience but to investigate, envision, and alter through human thought and action.

Bellah and Joas have assembled diverse scholars to guide us through this astonishing efflorescence of religious and philosophical creativity. As they explore the varieties of theorizing that arose during the period, they consider how these in turn led to utopian visions that brought with them the possibility of both societal reform and repression. The roots of our continuing discourse on religion, secularization, inequality, education, and the environment all lie in Axial Age developments. Understanding this transitional era, the authors contend, is not just an academic project but a humanistic endeavor.