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Ordon on Freedom of Association in the People’s Republic of Poland and Restrictions on the Catholic Church

Marta Ordon (John Paul II Catholic U. of Lublin, Faculty of Law) has posted Freedom of Association in the People’s Republic of Poland and Its Restriction with Regard to the Roman Catholic Church. The abstract follows.

The desire to associate with others is a manifestation of the social nature of every human being. In modern democracies, the right to associate is regarded as one of the personal liberties. Such democratic states create favorable conditions for the operation of various types of organizations, including those established to pursue religious goals. However, it was not the case in the People’s Republic of Poland (“PRP”), that is, under the communist rule. In a country modelled on the Soviet state and acknowledging the supremacy of the Communist Party over the entire society, all the other actors of the social system were expected to be mere “dummies on the public scene dominated by the Communist Party.” It is worth noting that the political system deployed in Poland after World War II was based on the atheistic Marxist ideology that was hostile to any religion or religious organizations, particularly the Roman Catholic Church. What follows, when pondering upon the issue of freedom of association in the PRP and its restriction with regard to the Catholic Church’s organizations, the ideological aspects must not be disregarded.

As a part of the introduction to the main body of the paper, the author will clarify the difference between the concept of freedom of association as adopted modern democracies and that reinforced in socialist countries, as well as demonstrating the attitude of communist authorities to the Roman Catholic Church and its organizations. Further, legal and factual constraints will be exposed that led to almost a total elimination of the Church-led organizations in communist Poland. The paper primarily explores the Polish literature on the subject and the material gathered in the Polish state and Church archives, since nothing about the subject has yet been published in English.

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Broyde on Lessons for Sharia Courts from the Beth Din in America

Michael J. Broyde (Emory U.) has posted Jewish Law Courts in America: Lessons Offered to Sharia Courts by the Beth Din of America Precedent. The abstract follows.

After a lengthy trial-and-error history, Jewish law in America has found a home in a well-defined and expansive system of Jewish law courts around the country referred to as batei din. The Beth Din of America (BDA), one of the nation’s most prominent rabbinic courts, was founded in 1960 to accommodate the portion of the Jewish community in America committed to living in accordance with both secular and religious law. For some time, batei din struggled to find their footing within the American legal system. Secular courts were initially uncomfortable upholding and enforcing decisions issued in accordance with what was essentially foreign law. Today, however, the BDA provides a sprawling network of Jewish law courts that function as arbitration panels (and more), offering litigants access to a religious forum marked by the characteristic expedience and affordability of the arbitration process. More significantly, the BDA has gained widespread acceptance among America’s secular courts, which, to date, have never overturned a BDA-issued decision. As the Muslim community in America embarks upon a quest to develop and refine its own religious court system, it should regard the BDA precedent as a useful navigation tool.

Although the BDA is now a fifty-year-old organization, its true metamorphosis as an arbitration panel began only in 1996 when it gained autonomy from the Rabbinical Council of America. Read more

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Around the Web This Week

Here are some interesting law and religion stories from around the web this week:

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Berg-Sørensen (ed.), “Contesting Secularism”

Layout 1This April, Ashgate Publishing will publish Contesting Secularism: Comparative Perspectives edited by Anders Berg-Sørensen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark). The publisher’s description follows.

As we enter the twenty-first century, the role of religion within civic society has become an issue of central concern across the world. The complex trends of secularism, multiculturalism and the rise of religiously motivated violence raise fundamental questions about the relationship between political institutions, civic culture and religious groups. Contesting Secularism represents a major intervention into this debate. Drawing together contributions from leading scholars from across the world it analyses how secularism functions as a political doctrine in different national contexts put under pressure by globalisation. In doing so it presents different models for the relationship between political institutions and religious groups, challenging the reader to be more aware of assumptions within their own cultural context, and raises alternative possibilities for the structure of democratic, multi-faith societies.

Through its inter-disciplinary and comparative approach, Contesting Secularism sets a new agenda for thinking about the place of religion in the public sphere of twenty-first century societies. It is essential reading for policy-makers, as well as for scholars and students in political science, law, sociology and religious studies.

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Pelkmans, “Ethnographies of Doubt”

Screen shot 2013-03-15 at 4.16.40 AMThis March, I.B. Tauris will publish Ethnographies of Doubt: Faith and Uncertainty in Contemporary Societies by M.E. Pelkmans (The London School of Economics and Political Science). The publisher’s description follows.

Religious and secular convictions have powerful effects, but their foundations are often surprisingly fragile. New converts often come across as stringent believers precisely because they need to dispel their own lingering doubts, while revolutionary movements survive only through the denial of ambiguity. This book shows that a focus on uncertainty and doubt is indispensable for grasping the role of ideas in social action. Drawing on a wide range of cases, from spirit mediums in Taiwan to Maoist revolutionaries in India, from right-wing populists in Europe to converts to Pentecostalism in Central Asia, the authors analyse the ways in which doubt is overcome and, conversely, how belief-systems collapse. In doing so, Ethnographies of Doubt provides important insights into the cycles of faith, hope, conviction and disillusion that are intrinsic to the human condition.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Conference: Religion, Values and Immigration (March 21)

On March 21, the Brookings Institution will host a forum in connection with the release of a new national opinion survey on religion, values, and immigration reform. The event, in Washington, will be webcast live. Details are here.

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Wood, “History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East”

History and ID in the LateThis month Oxford University Press has published History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East edited by Philip Wood (Cambridge University). The publisher’s description follows.

History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East gathers together the work of distinguished historians and early career scholars with a broad range of expertise to investigate the significance of newly emerged, or recently resurrected, ethnic identities on the borders of the eastern Mediterranean world. It focuses on the “long late antiquity” from the eve of the Arab conquest of the Roman East to the formation of the Abbasid caliphate. The first half of the book offers papers on the Christian Orient on the cusp of the Islamic invasions. These papers discuss how Christians negotiated the end of Roman power, whether in the selective use of the patristic past to create confessional divisions or the emphasis of the shared philosophical legacy of the Greco-Roman world. The second half of the book considers Muslim attempts to negotiate the pasts of the conquered lands of the Near East, where the Christian histories of Hira or Egypt were used to create distinctive regional identities for Arab settlers. Like the first half, this section investigates the redeployment of a shared history, this time the historical imagination of the Qu’ran and the era of the first caliphs. All the papers in the volume bring together studies of the invention of the past across traditional divides between disciplines, placing the re-assessment of the past as a central feature of the long late antiquity. As a whole, History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East represents a distinctive contribution to recent writing on late antiquity, due to its cultural breadth, its interdisciplinary focus, and its novel definition of late antiquity itself.

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Young, “Religion, Sex, and Politics”

PrintNext month Fernwood Publishing will publish Religion, Sex, and Politics: Christian Churches and Same-Sex Marriage in Canada by Pamela Dickey Young (Queen’s University). The publisher’s description follows.

Same-sex marriage continues to be a heated issue in Canadian politics. Why does this issue persist in the headlines and remain so controversial? What place does religion have in legislative and legal decisions? Religion, Sex and Politics analyzes the same-sex marriage debate in Canada by examining the intersections between religion, sexuality and public policy. Furthermore, the various arguments made by religious groups, both for and against same-sex marriage, are discussed, illustrating the range of perspectives on sexuality espoused by Christian groups and the numerous ways in which they influence the outcomes of legislation and court decisions.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Helfand’s Testimony: Implied Consent Institutionalism

Our friend and former guest Michael Helfand (Pepperdine) will be appearing with me at the US Commission on Civil Rights briefing next week, and he passes along his testimony.  Michael’s approach to the religious institution question, as developed not only here but also in some of his other excellent work, depends to an extent on a very interesting (and, I think, provocative) concept of implied consent derived from the individual and granted to the institution.  He locates some of the constitutional root of this idea in Watson v. Jones (1872).

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Pussy Riot Goes to Strasbourg

Year by year, it becomes clearer that Russia will be an important participant in global conversations about law and religion. This is true with respect to religious law—the canons of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC)—and also with respect to church- state and religious freedom issues.

For European scholars, it will be crucial to understand how the vocal and active presence of the ROC in the courts will influence the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). I have already shown that the ROC was a key player in the Lautsi case on the display of the crucifix in Italian public schools. After the first decision in Lautsi, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the ROC’s Department of External Church Relations, clearly expressed his opinion–on the judgment, the Court, and the need for action by religious groups–in a letter to the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone:

“We consider this practice of the European Court of Human Rights to be an attempt to impose radical secularism everywhere despite the national experience of church-state relations. The above mentioned decision is not the only one in the practice of the Court, which has increasingly shown an anti-Christian trend. Taking into account the fact that the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights have clearly lost touch with legal and historical reality in which most of the Europeans live, while the Court itself has turned into an instrument of promoting an ultra-liberal ideology, we believe it very important that religious communities in Europe should be involved in a discussion concerning its work”.

For these reasons, it will be interesting to see how the ECtHR decides the recently-lodged case of the Pussy Riot punk band (above), some of whose members were arrested after performing a “punk prayer” in one of the most important Russian churches. Maria Alekhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Natalia Tolokonniva were in fact sentenced to two years in prison on the charge of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”. The complaint at the ECtHR, filed one month ago, alleges that the group’s conviction amounts to a violation Convention’s guarantees of  freedom of speech, the right to liberty and security, the prohibition of torture and the right to a fair trial.

If the cases moves forward, it promises to be an important one in many regards: both for the legal arguments and standards that the Court will apply to balance (or not) the different rights at stake, but also for the position religious groups, like the ROC, take in any third party interventions before the Court.