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Smyth, et al., eds., “Religious Education in a Multicultural Europe”

UntitledIn August, Palgrave Macmillan will publish Religious Education in a Multicultural Europe: Children, Parents and Schools, edited by Emer Smyth (ESRI), Maureen Lyons (U. College Dublin), and Merike Darmody (ESRI). The publisher’s description follows.

Religion and schooling has become a controversial issue across Europe. But we know little about how these tensions are experienced by children and their families. This groundbreaking book draws on an innovative, comparative study to examine how religious and/or secular beliefs are formed at school and in the family in five countries with very different educational systems (Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Malta, and Scotland). New information on how schools and families influence the development of children’s religious identities is presented by placing the experiences of primary school children at the centre of the research, yielding fresh insights into their perspectives on religion and schooling. The book adopts a multidisciplinary perspective, thus providing a more holistic perspective on the processes at play. Importantly, it offers insights into key policy issues concerning the place of religion in the school system, illuminating current debates around religion and multiculturalism across Europe.

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Gilliat-Ray, et al., “Understanding Muslim Chaplaincy”

In September, Ashgate Publishing will publish Understanding Muslim Chaplaincy by Sophie Gilliat-Ray (Cardiff U.), Mansur Ali (Cardiff U.), and Stephen Pattison (Birmingham U.). The publisher’s description follows.

Understanding Muslim Chaplaincy provides a lens through which to explore critical questions relating to contemporary religion in public life, and the institutionalisation of Islam in particular.  Providing a rich description of the personnel, practice, and politics of contemporary Muslim chaplaincy, the authors consider the extent to which Muslim chaplaincy might be distinctive in Britain relative to the work of Muslim chaplains in the USA and other countries. This book will make a major contribution to international debate about the place of religion in public life and institutions.

This book derives from research that has depended on exclusive access to a wide range of public institutions and personnel who largely work ‘behind closed doors’. By making public the work of these chaplains and critically examining the impact of their work within and beyond their institutions, this book offers a groundbreaking study in the field of contemporary religion that will stimulate discussion for many years to come about Islam and Muslims in Western societies.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Shils on Text as Tradition

In preparation (maybe pre-preparation is more accurate) for a new large project, I am re-reading and enjoying the sociologist Edward Shils’s short masterpiece, Tradition. In an early part of the book, he says the following about “texts” which I thought relevant to several issues in law (particularly, but not only, constitutional law):

From the standpoint which I take here both declaration and interpretation are traditions. The physical artifacts–manuscripts–are traditions. The sacred text itself is a tradition. The “tradition” is accumulated understanding of the text; the text would be only a physical object without interpretation. The sacredness of the text sets it apart, but it would make no sense without an interpretation; yet the interpretation which makes it what it is, is regarded as different from the text. The works of literary figures like Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, and Dante are placed in a somewhat similar situation; large bodies of interpretation form around them. The manuscripts and printed books in which the text is recorded, the text and the interpretations of it are all tradita.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Hobby Lobby Obtains Preliminary Injunction

The Becket Fund is reporting that the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma has issued a preliminary injunction in the Hobby Lobby litigation against the enforcement of the federal government’s contraceptive mandate. The preliminary injunction follows after the Tenth Circuit’s recent decision in the litigation.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Plus, We Keep Electing These Puritanical Mayors

Here’s a surprise for a summer Friday. Christianity Today posts about a new list, published by the real-estate blog, Movoto, of the “saintliest” cities in the United States. Can you guess number one? Bet you can’t. It’s Babylon on the Hudson–and my home town–New York City!

However did the nice people at Movoto come up with this? Christianity Today explains:

Movoto says it reached its conclusions by reversing the data it collected to compile its “sinful cities” list, which it released last month. It based those calculations for the country’s 95 most populous cities on data selected to represent each of the seven deadly sins, including:

Strip clubs per capita (Lust) Cosmetic surgeons per capita (Pride) Violent crime per year per 1,000 residents (Wrath) Theft per year per 1,000 residents (Envy) Percentage of disposable income given to charity each year (Greed) Percentage of obese residents (Gluttony) Percentage of physically inactive residents (Sloth)

Whichever cities ranked highest in those categories were determined to be “sinful.” To determine which cities were most saintly, however, Movoto looked “at the same criteria (the sins) from the opposite perspective…. This time around the cities with the least amount of these things would rank highest and thus be the most saintly.

The most saintly city, according to these criteria, is good old Gotham. I’m sure Evangelical readers will be offended by the obvious works-righteousness of this reasoning, but, really, it makes a lot of sense, when you think about it. It’s like the old parenting advice: busy kids stay out of trouble. We New Yorkers are far too busy pursuing money and career advancement to fall into temptations. Greed and pride, for example.

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Around the Web This Week

Some interesting law & religion stories from around the web this week:

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Ariel, “An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews”

9780814770689_FullIn June, New York University Press published An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews by Yaakov Ariel (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). The publisher’s description follows.

It is generally accepted that Jews and evangelical Christians have little in common. Yet special alliances developed between the two groups in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Evangelicals viewed Jews as both the rightful heirs of Israel and as a group who failed to recognize their true savior. Consequently, they set out to influence the course of Jewish life by attempting to evangelize Jews and to facilitate their return to Palestine. Their double-edged perception caused unprecedented political, cultural, and theological meeting points that have revolutionized Christian-Jewish relationships. An Unusual Relationship explores the beliefs and political agendas that evangelicals have created in order to affect the future of the Jews. Additionally, it analyses Jewish opinions and reactions to those efforts, as well as those of other religious groups, such as Arab Christians.

This volume offers a fascinating, comprehensive analysis of the roots, manifestations, and consequences of evangelical interest in the Jews, and the alternatives they provide to conventional historical Christian-Jewish interactions. It also provides a compelling understanding of Middle Eastern politics through a new lens.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Garnett on Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Freedom

Our friend Rick Garnett (Notre Dame) has a short piece on Commonweal concerning the implications of the Supreme Court’s recent same-sex marriage decisions (Rick’s primary focus is the DOMA decision, United States v. Windsor) for claims of religious freedom. The essay may be usefully read, I think, as having larger application to the issue of exemptions from generally applicable laws. A bit from the conclusion of Rick’s essay:

It is easier to respect religious freedom in law and policy when everyone agrees or when governments do not do very much. With disagreement and regulation, however, inevitably comes conflict between religious commitments and legal requirements and, when it comes, the majority tends to take care of itself. What about the rest? In a constitutional democracy like ours, we are generally willing to absorb some costs and suffer some inconveniences in order to accommodate the invocation of rights by dissenting or idiosyncratic minorities, especially when the majority thinks that it has a stake in those rights. For example, America still takes a robustly libertarian approach to the freedom of speech, and protects offensive and worthless expression to an anomalous extent, because most Americans still think that protecting misuses and abuses of the right is “worth it.”

However, as religious liberty increasingly comes to be seen as something clung to by a few rather than cherished and exercised by many, as religious traditions and teachings start to strike many as the expensive and even dangerous concerns of quirky, alien margin-dwellers, and as the “benefits” of allowing religious believers’ objections or religious institutions’ independence to stand in the way of the majority’s preferred policies begin to look more like extractions by small special-interest groups than broadly shared public goods, we should expect increasing doubts about whether religious liberty is really “worth it.” We should be concerned that the characterization by the majority in Windsor of DOMA’s purpose and of the motives of the overwhelming and bipartisan majority of legislators that supported it reflects a view that those states—and religious communities—that reject the redefinition of marriage are best regarded as backward and bigoted, unworthy of respect. Such a view is not likely to generate compromise or accommodation and so it poses a serious challenge to religious freedom.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Judge Duncan on the Influence of Customary Practice on Constitutional Interpretation

As has been widely reported, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit yesterday in a divided decision held that President Obama violated the Recess Appointments Clause of the Constitution in appointing three people to the National Labor Relations Board on January 4, 2012–that is, “intra-session,” during the Senate’s session beginning January 3, 2012. Judges Hamilton and Duncan held that “the Recess” in the Recess Appointments Clause of the Constitution (Article II, section 2, clause 3) means only the period between the two discrete sessions of the Senate, and that the President therefore may only use his powers under the Recess Appointments Clause inter-session. Judge Diaz dissented. The Fourth Circuit’s holding on this issue matches the holding of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in NLRB v. Noel Canning, which will be heard by the Supreme Court next term.

What does all of this have to do with law and religion? Well, not too much. But there is a very interesting set of observations in Judge Duncan’s brief concurring opinion which does make a connection (beginning at page 126). Here’s Judge Duncan:

Historical practice in the decades following ratification of the Constitution is similarly sparse, and too easily subject to manipulation by “savvy lawyers,” as the dissent rightly notes. Diss. Op. at 147. Nor is it obvious how the uptick in intrasession recess appointments since 1981 ought to affect our analysis. Compare Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 792 (1983) (upholding the practice of beginning legislative sessions with a prayer because its long history of use had made it “part of the fabric of our society”),with INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 944 (1983) (observing that the increased frequency of the Congressional veto in statutes “sharpened rather than blunted” the judicial inquiry).

The questions Judge Duncan is asking are extremely difficult in constitutional law, and they are lots of fun to pose to students: what is the strength of custom or practice in constitutional interpretation? Should a long-standing practice which the government has engaged in for many years render the practice more likely or less likely to be constitutional? Or should the customary nature of a practice have no effect on constitutionality at all?

What makes Judge Duncan’s choice of examples particularly neat is that the issue of the constitutionality of legislative prayer (as readers of the Forum will know) is also on the Court’s docket next term in Town of Greece v. Galloway. And yet another interesting feature of the juxtaposition of Marsh v. Chambers and INS v. Chadha–which seemingly take different views of the influence of custom on constitutional interpretation–is that Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote the majority opinion for the Court in both cases.

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“Religion, Identity and Conflict in Britain: From the Restoration to the Twentieth Century” (Brown, Knight & Morgan-Guy, eds.)

This month, Ashgate publishes Religion, Identity and Conflict in Britain: 9781409451488.JKT_templateFrom the Restoration to the Twentieth Century, edited by Stewart J. Brown (U. of Edinburgh, UK), Frances Knight (U. of Nottingham, UK), and John Morgan-Guy (U. of Wales, UK).  The publisher’s description follows.

The British state between the mid-seventeenth century to the early twentieth century was essentially a Christian state. Christianity permeated society, defining the rites of passage – baptism, first communion, marriage and burial – that shaped individual lives, providing a sense of continuity between past, present and future generations, and informing social institutions and voluntary associations. Yet this religious conception of state and society was also the source of conflict. The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 brought limited toleration for Protestant Dissenters, who felt unable to worship in the established Church, and there were challenges to faith raised by biblical and historical scholarship, science, moral questioning and social dislocations and unrest.

This book brings together a distinguished team of authors who explore the interactions of religion, politics and culture that shaped and defined modern Britain. They consider expressions of civic consciousness in the expanding towns and cities, the growth of Welsh national identity, movements for popular education and temperance reform, and the influence of organised sport, popular journalism, and historical writing in defining national life. Most importantly, the contributors highlight the vital role of religious faith and religious institutions in the understanding of the modern British state.