Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Bradley (ed.), “Challenges to Religious Liberty in the Twenty-First Century”

Here is a terrific collection of essays edited by Gerard V. Bradley (Notre Dame), Challenges to Religious Liberty in the Twenty-First Century (CUP 2012).  The contributors are CLR Forum guest Steve Smith and our friend Rick Garnett, as well as José Casanova, Tom Farr, Daniel Philpott, Christopher Tollefsen, William Inboden, Professor Bradley, and my old mentor and dear friend, Kent Greenawalt.  The publisher’s description follows.

Almost everyone today affirms the importance and merit of religious liberty. But religious liberty is being challenged by new questions (for example, use of the niqab or church adoption services for same-sex couples) and new forces (such as globalization and Islamism). Combined, these make the meaning of religious liberty in the twenty-first century uncertain. This collection of essays by ten of the world’s leading scholars on religious liberty takes aim at these issues. The book is arranged around five specific challenges to religious liberty today: the state’s responsibility to prevent coercion and intimidation of believers by others within the same faith community; the U.S.’s basic moral responsibilities to promote religious liberty abroad; how to understand and apply the traditional right of conscientious objection in today’s circumstances; the distinctive problems presented by globalization; and the viability today of an ‘originalist’ interpretation of the First Amendment religion clauses.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Moreland on Rieff on Normative Institutional Failure

Have a look at our friend Mike Moreland’s post on Philip Rieff’s The Triumph of the Therapeutic.  His description of Rieff’s work as “extraordinary (if highly peculiar)” rang true for me.  I rely on a later work of Rieff’s, Charisma, in this essay.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 2 Comments

Funny, They Never Thought of That

Something’s definitely going on in Europe. When a German court ruled recently that a doctor who performed a circumcision on a male child for religious reasons could be criminally liable, most Americans thought the ruling was an aberration. But then, as my colleague Marc writes,  it turned out that that certain hospitals in Austria and Switzerland had suspended the practice out of a concern for criminal liability. Now, according to a story in Haaretz, Norway’s children’s-rights ombudsperson, Dr. Anne Lindboe, has helpfully proposed that Jews and Muslims in her country replace circumcision with a nonsurgical, symbolic alternative. Circumcising infant boys — at eight days, for Jews, and around seven years, typically, for Muslims — violates their rights, Dr. Lindboe argues, and causes unnecessary pain. Dr. Lindboe did not herself attempt to devise a new ritual for Jews and Muslims; she doubtless believed that respect for religious freedom counseled letting them come up with their own alternatives. At least for now. (H/T: Religion Clause).

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Wuthnow, “The God Problem”

A fascinating looking book from the eminent sociologist of religion Robert Wuthnow (Princeton), The God Problem: Expressing Faith and Being Reasonable (University of California Press 2012).  The publisher’s description follows.

The United States is one of the most highly educated societies on earth, and also one of the most religious. In The God Problem, Robert Wuthnow examines how middle class Americans juggle the seemingly paradoxical relationship between faith and reason.

Based on exceptionally rich and candid interviews with approximately two hundred people from various faiths, this book dispels the most common explanations: that Americans are adept at keeping religion and intellect separate, or that they are a nation of “joiners.” Instead, Wuthnow argues, we do this—not by coming up with rational proofs for the existence of God—but by adopting subtle usages of language that keep us from making unreasonable claims about God. In an illuminating narrative that reveals the complex negotiations many undertake in order to be religious in the modern world, Wuthnow probes the ways of talking that occur in prayers, in discussions about God, in views of heaven, in understandings of natural catastrophes and personal tragedies, and in attempts to reconcile faith with science.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Schmidt, “Restless Souls”

I was not aware of this book, now being published in its second edition: (first published in 2005) Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality (University of California Press 2d ed. 2012) by Leigh Eric Schmidt (Washington University in St. Louis).  What looks interesting is its connection of the seemingly contemporary American attraction to “spirituality” with older veins of American religious sentiment like transcendentalism.  The publisher’s description follows.

Yoga classes and Zen meditation, New-Age retreats and nature mysticism—all are part of an ongoing religious experimentation that has surprisingly deep roots in American history. Tracing out the country’s Transcendentalist and cosmopolitan religious impulses over the last two centuries, Restless Souls explores America’s abiding romance with spirituality as religion’s better half. Now in its second edition, including a new preface, Leigh Eric Schmidt’s fascinating book provides a rich account of how this open-road spirituality developed in American culture in the first place as well as a sweeping survey of the liberal religious movements that touted it and ensured its continued vitality.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Patel, “Sacred Ground”

From Random House this month, a new book on anti-Muslim prejudice in the United States, Eboo Patel, Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America (2012). The publisher’s description follows.

In the decade following the attacks of 9/11, suspicion and animosity toward American Muslims has increased rather than subsided. Alarmist, hateful rhetoric once relegated to the fringes of political discourse has now become frighteningly mainstream, with pundits and politicians routinely invoking the specter of Islam as a menacing, deeply anti-American force.

In Sacred Ground, author and renowned interfaith leader Eboo Patel says this prejudice is not just a problem for Muslims but a challenge to the very idea of America. Patel shows us that Americans from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. have been “interfaith leaders,” illustrating how the forces of pluralism in America have time and again defeated the forces of Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

Religious Freedom: How Others See Us

Before everyone starts emailing, let me quickly say that the state of religious freedom in America is qualitatively better than in many, many other countries.  And I am not in any way equating the HHS Contraception Mandate with the sort of religious persecution that exists routinely elsewhere. (The US does not imprison and abuse people for conducting prayer meetings, for example). Given the US’s habit of issuing annual reports that condemn threats to religious freedom in other countries, though, it might be helpful at least to read what outside observers say about us. Here are two statements, one an editorial on a Russian Orthodox Church website, and the other a public letter from the Vatican, arguing that the US has its own religious freedom issues to address. Of the two, the Vatican’s is better done — the Russian veers into anti-American agitprop — though even the Vatican’s letter is itself a little vague, speaking only of “concerted efforts … to redefine and restrict the exercise of the right to religious freedom,” and ” the unprecedented gravity of … new threats to the Church’s liberty and public moral witness” in America. The implication is clear, though. The Mandate may be compromising the credibility of the US’s voice on religious freedom around the world.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Saudi Arabia Detains, Deports 35 Ethiopian Christians for Praying

It’s astonishing this story has not received greater coverage in the media. The Jerusalem Post reports that Saudi Arabia has deported 35 Ethiopian Christians, after detaining them in allegedly brutal conditions for seven months, for conducting a private prayer meeting last Christmas. The Ethiopians, who had been working in Jeddah, were arrested in a raid on December 15 and, according to human rights organizations, subjected to beatings, sexual assaults, and attempts to force them to convert to Islam. The Saudi government never formally charged them with a crime, though it did suggest at one point it was holding the detainees on the charge of illicit mingling with the opposite sex. In February, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom had called on Saudi Arabia to release the Ethiopians.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

1st Circuit Applies Neutral Principles Approach in Church Copyright Dispute

Here’s an unusual church property dispute. The Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Brookline, Massachusetts brought a copyright infringement action against a former monk who had posted on his website English-language translations of ancient Christian texts the monastery had prepared. The former monk, now an archbishop in a different Christian communion, raised a number of copyright defenses, including fair use and non-originality. Last week, the First Circuit rejected all the archbishop’s defenses and ruled in favor of the monastery. The copyright issues are quite dense and apparently of real importance to copyright lawyers. For CLR Forum readers, though, the case is significant for its implications for church autonomy doctrine. The archbishop argued that the monastery’s statutes gave title to the texts to the monastery’s then-parent body, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, or ROCOR. (The monastery has since ended its affiliation with ROCOR). Using the neutral principles approach, the First Circuit rejected this argument. Applying “the Monastic Statutes’ plain terms,” and “without treading upon religious doctrine, church governance, and ecclesiastical laws,” title to the texts rested in the monastery, not ROCOR. The case is Society of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Inc. v. Gregory, 2012 WL 3125120 (1st Cir., Aug. 2, 2012).

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Ginn & Blaikie on Judges and Religious-Based Reasoning

Diana Ginn & David Blaikie (Dalhousie U. Schulich School of Law) has posted Judges and Religious-Based Reasoning. The abstract follows.

Is it ever acceptable for a judge in a secular liberal democracy to rely on, and explicitly refer to, religious-based reasoning in reaching a decision? While it is unlikely that many Canadian judges will be seized with the desire to include religious-based reasoning in their judgments, we raise this issue because it allows us to examine the appropriate role of religious-based discourse in a challenging context, where arguments about unconstitutionality are strongest. In a previous article, we concluded that there are no ethical impediments to citizens using such discourse in discussing public affairs. We argued that it is no less virtuous (although it may sometimes be less persuasive) to reason from one’s religious convictions than from any other comprehensive set of values, when advocating for or against public policy alternatives. We would suggest that this is generally also the case for elected representatives. ‚Thus, in our view, it would be perfectly acceptable for a member of a legislature to buttress a call for increased funding for social services by reference to Proverbs 19:17: “One who is gracious to a poor man lends to the Lord.” However, it is unconstitutional for a legislature to pass legislation for a religious purpose; therefore, legislators must recognize the distinction between advocating legislation designed to achieve a religious purpose and using religious arguments to support or oppose legislation designed to achieve a public purpose.