Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Thames on Making Religious Freedom a Priority in Europe

Knox Thames (US Commission on International Religious Freedom) has posted a new paper, Making Freedom of Religion or Belief a True EU Priority, the latest in a series of working papers from the ReligioWest Project at the European Union Institute in Florence. Here’s the abstract:

The Council of the European Union recently released its Strategic Framework on Human Rights and Democracy, which included freedom of religion or belief in a list of 36 desired outcomes. The timing is good, as countries around the world are grappling with religion/state questions and the role of religious freedom for minority religious communities and dissenting members of the majority faith. Freedom of religion or belief stands at the crux of these issues, yet the Strategic Framework risks losing the religious freedom among the list of other worthy issues. By learning from the experience of the United States in its decade of religious freedom work, the European Union can jump start its efforts and ensure they have impact during this time of global transition.

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Adida, Laitin & Valfort on Muslims in France

Claire L. Adida (University of California, San Diego), David Laitin (Stanford University) and Marie-Anne Valfort (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne) have posted Muslims in France: Identifying a Discriminatory Equilibrium. The abstract follows.

Evidence about the assimilation patterns of Muslim immigrants in Western countries is inconclusive because current research fails to isolate the effect of religion from that of typical confounds, such as race, ethnicity or nationality. A unique identification strategy allows us to isolate the effect of religion. Survey data collected in France in 2009 indicate that Muslim immigrants assimilate less than do their Christian counterparts, and that this difference does not decrease with the time immigrants spend in France. Experimental games reveal that the persistence of Muslims’ lower assimilation is consistent with Muslims and rooted French being locked in a bad equilibrium whereby: (i) rooted French exhibit taste-based discrimination against those they are able to identify as Muslims; (ii) Muslims trust rooted French and French institutions less than do Christians.

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Hryn (ed.), “Churches and States”

This December, Harvard University Press will publish Churches and States: Studies on the History of Christianity in Ukraine edited by Halyna Hryn (Editor, Harvard Ukrainian Studies). The publisher’s description follows.

This book collects nine articles that originally appeared in the journal Harvard Ukrainian Studies and that arose from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute’s Millennium Project, an initiative launched in the 1980s to celebrate one thousand years of the Christianization of Kyivan Rus´. The articles cover a wide array of subjects: the ecclesiastical structure of the Christian Church in Rus´ in its earliest period (Andrzej Poppe); the conflict between Orthodoxy and the Uniate Church from 1569 to 1700 (Teresa Chynczewska-Hennel); an account of the Uniate Church and the partitions of Poland (Larry Wolff); the transformation of the Greek Catholic Church under the Austrian Empire (1848–1914) (John-Paul Himka); the Greek Catholic Church in the period between the two World Wars (Andrew Sorokowski); a rethinking of the relationship of Church and society in Galician Ukraine from 1914 to 1944 (Bohdan Budurowycz); and the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine during the interwar period (Bohdan Bociurkiw). The book concludes with a bio-bibliography of Bohdan Bociurkiw, a scholar who devoted his career to the study of Ukrainian Church history (Andrii Krawchuk). These essays provide new insights and a fresh perspective to the discipline.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Swiss and Austrian Hospitals Suspend Non-Medically Necessary Circumcisions

Here’s a story which reports that certain Swiss and Austrian hospitals have suspended circumcision in situations where the procedure is not medically necessary.  They have taken these steps allegedly because of the legal uncertainty of circumcision after a German court held the practice to be the equivalent of a criminal assault.  That particular reason seems strange to me, since Switzerland and Austria are not under German jurisdiction.  But that’s the reason they give.  From the story:

A group of Orthodox rabbis warned on Wednesday that the ancient Jewish practice of infant male circumcision could face further restrictions in Europe after some hospitals in Austria and Switzerland suspended the procedure by citing a German court ruling that it could amount to criminal bodily harm.

Last month’s verdict by a regional court in Cologne did not ban circumcision, but it prompted angry protests from Jewish and Muslims groups, especially after the German Medical Association advised doctors not to perform unnecessary circumcisions until the legal situation was clarified – something Germany‘s government has pledged to do soon.

Two weeks ago, a hospital in Zurich also suspended circumcisions, saying it wanted to investigate public concerns about the procedure, which involves cutting off a boy’s foreskin. Anti-circumcision campaigners say the act breaches the child’s right to bodily integrity, while faith groups insist it is part of their religious freedom.

“We in Switzerland aren’t directly affected by the Cologne ruling, but it sparked a debate about how to deal with the medical and ethical issues involved,” said Marco Stuecheli, a spokesman for Zurich’s Children‘s Hospital.

On Tuesday, the governor of Vorarlberg province in Austria told state-run hospitals to stop circumcisions except for health reasons until the legal situation was clarified. He said the German decision, which arose from the case of a child whose circumcision led to medical complications, was a “precedence-setting judgment.”

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

From Gibbon’s Volume 2: Christianity and the Civil Authority

Until Judge Posner’s recent dissent in the Elmbrook School District case (discussed here and here), I don’t think I can remember the last time a judge cited to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (a quick Westlaw search shows only a handful of citations).  If evidence were needed that Judge Posner writes his own opinions, one could probably stop with that quotation.  I’ve got an old 1925 edition of the seven volumes edited by J.B. Bury which had been gathering dust here at home, and I started paging through it last night (a 12-volume on-line set may be found here).  The beginning of Volume 2 (Chapters 15 and 16) is all about the rise of Christianity and the early Christians’ view of the existing Roman civil power.  Here’s a bit from Chapter 15 where Gibbon’s, one might say, ambivalent view of the early Christians shines through:

The Christians were not less averse to the business [of war] than to the pleasures of this world.  The defence of our persons and property they knew not how to reconcile with the patient doctrine which enjoined an unlimited forgiveness of past injuries and commanded them to invite the repetition of fresh insults.  Their simplicity was offended by the use of oaths, by the pomp of magistracy, and by the active contention of public life, nor could their humane ignorance be convinced that it was lawful on any occasion to shed the blood of our fellow-creatures, either by the sword of justice or by that of war; even though their criminal or hostile attempts should threaten the peace and safety of the whole community.*  It was acknowledged that, under a less perfect law, the powers of the Jewish constitution had been exercised, with the approbation of Heaven, by inspired prophets and by anointed kings.  The Christians felt and confessed that such institutions might be necessary for the present system of the world, and they cheerfully submitted to the authority of their Pagan governors.  But, while they inculcated the maxims of passive obedience, they refused to take any active part in the civil administration or the military defence of the empire.  Some indulgence might perhaps be allowed to those persons who, before their conversion, were already engaged in such violent and sanguinary occupations; but it was impossible that the Christians, without renouncing a more sacred duty, could assume the character of soldiers, of magistrates, or of princes.  

* The same patient principles have ben revived since the Reformation by the Socinians, the modern Anabaptists, and the Quakers . . . . [MOD note: see Philip Hamburger’s piece about 6 years ago, Religious Freedom in Philadelphia, for parallel disagreements between the Revolutionaries and the Quakers on the question of conscientious objection to military service]

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

ECtHR’s Grand Chamber to Hear Romanian Church Autonomy Case

The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights  has decided to review the judgment in Sindicatul Păstoral Cel Bun v. Romania, a significant church autonomy case. In the case, a group of Romanian Orthodox priests sought to register as a trade union. The Romanian Orthodox Church objected, arguing that registration would violate the Church’s autonomy, and a Romanian court agreed. In January, however, a  lower chamber of the ECtHR ruled that the European Human Rights Convention granted the priests a right to unionize even over their church’s objections (for details, see our discussion of the lower chamber’s reasoning).  Romania referred the lower chamber’s decision to the Grand Chamber, which has accepted the case. This is not the only important church autonomy case at the ECtHR these days. In May, a different chamber ruled, in Fernandez Martinez v. Spain, that the church autonomy principle allowed a Catholic bishop to fire a priest who had been teaching religion in Spanish schools. Here’s a press release about the Romanian case from the Becket Fund, which represents Romania and the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

The Wider Implications of the Clergy Sex-Abuse Crisis

Baylor University historian Philip Jenkins has written a provocative essay on the wider implications of the clergy sex abuse crisis for American Catholicism. It’s not just that victims have suffered, that clergy have gone to jail, that the Church has paid billions of dollars in lawsuits, that charitable work has been curtailed, and that several dioceses have declared bankruptcy. The scandal has also diminished the Church’s voice on debates about law and religion. Where once people would have paid respect to the Church’s views, even if they disagreed with them, the crisis has so weakened the Church’s moral authority that people dismiss the institution and its arguments entirely. For example, in Jenkins’s view, the ineffectiveness of the Church’s voice has greatly influenced the debate on same-sex marriage:

One great “might have been” involves same-sex marriage. In light of present realities, it is hard to recall just how fringe and even bizarre an issue this seemed just a decade ago, and a large section of the American public is Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Turner, “Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet”

From John G. Turner (George Mason), a new biography of Mormon leader Brigham Young, who, at one point, was both President of the LDS Church and Governor of the Utah Territory: Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Harvard 2012). The publisher’s description follows.

Brigham Young was a rough-hewn craftsman from New York whose impoverished and obscure life was electrified by the Mormon faith. He trudged around the United States and England to gain converts for Mormonism, spoke in spiritual tongues, married more than fifty women, and eventually transformed a barren desert into his vision of the Kingdom of God. While previous accounts of his life have been distorted by hagiography or polemical exposé, John Turner provides a fully realized portrait of a colossal figure in American religion, politics, and westward expansion.

After the 1844 murder of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Young gathered those Latter-day Saints who would follow him and led them over the Rocky Read more

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

For Wisconsinites (and other Church-Staters)

I’ll be on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “At Issue With Ben Merens” from 5-6 pm eastern time, talking about the separation of church and state in the public school context as well as the 7th Circuit’s Doe v. Elmbrook School District decision discussed below.

UPDATE: The interview can be downloaded here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Catholic Priest Receives 3-6 Years For Child Endangerment

A Pennsylvania judge today sentenced Monsignor William Lynn, a former official of the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, to a term of three to six years for the crime of felony child endangerment. A jury convicted Lynn last month in connection with his oversight of now-defrocked priest Edward Avery, who is serving a prison term for the sexual assault of an altar boy in 1999. Rather than reveal what he knew about allegations against the priest, the sentencing judge said, Lynn had chosen to obey his bishop and remain silent. Lynn is the first American priest to be convicted in connection with the covering up of sex abuse in the Catholic Church. His lawyers plan an appeal. The AP has the story here.