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Around the Web This Week

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

Posted on by JCPW

Mitchell, “Tocqueville in Arabia”

9780226087313This August, The University of Chicago Press will publish Tocqueville in Arabia: Dilemmas in a Democratic Age by Joshua Mitchell (Georgetown University). The publisher’s description follows.

The Arab Spring, with its calls for sweeping political change, marked the most profound popular uprising in the Middle East for generations. But if the nascent democracies born of these protests are to succeed in the absence of a strong democratic tradition, their success will depend in part on an understanding of how Middle Easterners view themselves, their allegiances to family and religion, and their relationship with the wider world in which they are increasingly integrated.

Many of these same questions were raised by Alexis de Tocqueville during his 1831 tour of America, itself then a rising democracy. Joshua Mitchell spent years teaching Tocqueville’s classic account, Democracy in America, in America and the Arab Gulf and, with Tocqueville in Arabia, he offers a profound personal take. One of the reasons for the book’s widespread popularity in the region is that its commentary on the challenges of democracy and the seemingly contradictory concepts of equality and individuality continue to speak to current debates. While Mitchell’s American students tended to value the individualism of commercial self-interest, his Middle Eastern students had grave doubts about individualism and a deep suspicion for capitalism, which they saw as risking the destruction of long-held loyalties and obligations. When asked about suffering, American students answered in psychological or sociological terms, while Middle Eastern students understood it in terms of religion. Mitchell describes modern democratic man as becoming what Tocqueville predicted: a “distinct kind of humanity” that would be increasingly isolated and alone. Whatever their differences, students in both worlds were grappling with a sense of disconnectedness that social media does little to remedy.

 We live in a time rife with mutual misunderstandings between America and the Middle East, and Tocqueville in Arabia offers a guide to the present, troubled times, leavened by the author’s hopes about the future.

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Lippy & Tranby, “Religion in Contemporary America”

9780415617383_p0_v1_s260x420This April, Routledge published Religion in Contemporary America by Charles H. Lippy (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) and Eric Tranby (University of Delaware). The publisher’s description follows.

This book provides a fresh, engaging multi-disciplinary introduction to religion in contemporary America. The chapters explore the roots of contemporary American religion from the 1950s up to the present day, looking at the major traditions including mainline Protestantism, the evangelical-pentecostal surge, Catholicism, Judaism, African-American religions and new religious movements. The authors ask whether Americans are becoming less religious, and how religious thought has moved from traditional systematic theology to approaches such as black and feminist theology and environmental theology. The book introduces religion and social theory, and explores key issues and themes such as: religion and social change; politics; gender; sexuality; diversity; race and poverty. Students and instructors will find the combination of historical and sociological perspectives an invaluable aid to understanding this fascinating but complex field.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Zucca on Freedom of Religion as an International Human Right

Lorenzo Zucca (King’s College London) has published Prince or Pariah? The Place of Freedom of Religion in a System of International Human Rights, as part of the Working Paper Series produced by the ReligioWest project at the European University Institute. The abstract follows:

The human right to freedom of religion (HRFR) at the international level is a deeply contested concept and is interpreted in radically different ways in the respective historical constitutional instruments of the US and Europe. It is, for example, embedded in the First Amendment of the American
Constitution, but finds no explicit recognition in the French Declaration of Rights. The question that emerges from this simple starting point is: what is the place of freedom of religion in a system of protection of international human rights? Is there a single answer to this question, or is it a deeply contingent matter that depends on discrete constitutional histories? This paper attempts to unravel this deeply contentious issue, which goes to the very core of disagreement about the nature of the human
rights to freedom of religion. Lacking agreement as to what constitutes freedom of religion, international intervention should limit itself to the bare minimum in this area. This renders freedom of religion a pariah at the international level.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Third Circuit Denies Rehearing En Banc in Corporate Free Exercise Case

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied rehearing en banc in Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The vote was 7 to 5.

In light of the many problems with Judge Cowen’s opinion for the panel majority as well as the circuit split that is developing over the issue of corporate free exercise of religion (for constitutional and statutory purposes) and the dichotomous confusions that the issue is generating (religious vs. secular, for-profit vs. non-profit), it would not be surprising if one or more of these cases found their way to the Supreme Court relatively soon. On the other hand, these kinds of predictions have an uncanny way of being wrong.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Movsesian & DeGirolami at ICLARS Conference Next Week

Next week, Marc DeGirolami and I will be participating in the biannual conference of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, which will take place at the University of Virginia and William and Mary Law School. I’ll present a paper on the rise of the Nones and moderate a panel on religious symbols and public reason. Marc will present a paper on “Judging Theory” (co-authored with former CLR Forum Guest Kevin Walsh). Some other CLR Forum Guests will also be presenting papers, including Perry Dane, Michael Helfand, and Barak Richman. Details are here. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hello!

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Fox, “An Introduction to Religion and Politics”

This April, Routledge published An Introduction to Religion and Politics: Theory and Practice by 9780415676328Jonathan Fox (Bar-llan University, Israel). The publisher’s description follows.

An Introduction to Religion and Politics offers a comprehensive overview of the many theories of religion and politics, and provides students with an accessible but in-depth account of the most significant debates, issues and methodologies. Fox examines the ways in which religion influences politics, analyses the current key issues and provides a state of the art account of religion and politics, highlighting the diversity in state religion policies around the world.

Topics covered include:

    • Secularism and secularization
    • Religious identity
    • Religious worldviews, beliefs, doctrines and theologies
    • Religious legitimacy
    • Religious institutions and mobilization
    • Rational and functional religion
    • Religious fundamentalism
    • Conflict, violence and terror

This work combines theoretical analysis with data on the religion policies of 177 governments, showing that while most of the world’s government support religion and many restrict it; true neutrality on the issue of religion is extremely rare. Religion is becoming an inescapable issue in politics.

This work will be essential reading for all students of religion and politics, and will also be of great interest to those studying related subjects such as comparative politics, international relations and war and conflict studies.

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Seo, “State Management of Religion in Indonesia”

This June, Routledge published State Management of Religion in Indonesia by 9780415517164Myengkyo Seo (University of Cambridge). The publisher’s description follows.

Although Indonesia is generally considered to be a Muslim state, and is indeed the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, it has a sizeable Christian minority as a legacy of Dutch colonialism, with Christians often occupying relatively high social positions. This book examines the management of religion in Indonesia. It discusses how Christianity has developed in Indonesia, how the state, though Muslim in outlook and culture, is nevertheless formally secular, and how the principal Christian church, the Java Christian Church, has adapted its practices to fit local circumstances. It examines religious violence and charts the evolution of the state’s religious policies, analyzing in particular the impact of the 1974 Marriage Law showing how it enabled extensive state regulation, but how in practice, rather than reinforcing religious divisions, inter-religious marriage, involving the conversion of one party, is widespread. Overall, the book shows how Indonesia is developing its own brand of secularism, neither a full-blooded Islamic state like Saudi Arabia, nor an outright secular state like Turkey.

Posted on by Perry Dane · 1 Comment

Religious Division and Identity – Richard III and the Rest of Us – Part I

Thanks to Mark Movsesian for inviting me to guest blog here.  I’ll mainly be posting in October, but here’s a down payment inspired by Mark’s entry about the decision to re-inter the recently-discovered remains of King Richard III in Leicester’s Anglican Cathedral rather than give him a Catholic burial.  The Catholic bishop of Nottingham  has approved the plan, and Mark’s post was appropriately relaxed, even tongue-in-cheek, about the whole thing.  But some Catholic commentators are genuinely upset.  They argue that Richard was Catholic, not Anglican, and deserves a Catholic ceremony.  They insist that, for that matter, the Anglican Church didn’t even exist when Richard died.

Fights over long-dead bodies, famous or not, are often both religiously fraught and emotional.  Consider the efforts of American Indian tribes, bolstered by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990, to reclaim remains that have ended up in museum collections.  But they can also implicate deeper issues about religious identity and continuity — questions that end up involving theology, history, and law.  For example, are prehistoric remains, such as those of Kenwick Man, genuinely the patrimony of modern native tribes?  The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit famously said no.

Back to Richard III, though.  Many Anglicans would deny that Richard III was “Catholic” in the limited contemporary sense of the word that would exclude his membership in the “Church of England.”  The simple reason is that Anglicans claim a direct line back from their Church to the Church to which Richard belonged.  As the COE’s website puts it, “The roots of the Church of England go back to the time of the Roman Empire when Christianity entered the Roman province of Britain. Through the influences of St Alban, St Illtud, St Ninian, St Patrick and, later, St Augustine, St Aidan and St Cuthbert, the Church of England developed, acknowledging the authority of the Pope until the Reformation in the 16th century.”  Thus, Henry VIII might have split the English Church from Rome, but he did not create it anew.  To be sure, Catholics have a different view. But neither position is self-evident by sheer definition.

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Posted on by Robert J. Delahunty

Tocqueville on materialism

In my last posting, I discussed Tocqueville’s view that religious belief in “natural” to human beings, but that religion loses its hold when it is instrumentalized to serve a political purpose. On that view, it would seem to follow that religion should be secure in a nation like the United States, where the government seeks to avoid any entanglement with religion. However, Tocqueville also thinks that American democracy has a tendency to corrode religious belief, so that our democratic environment is not as hospitable to religion as it might have seemed. The primary reason why American democracy is predisposed to unbelief, Tocqueville seems to say, is that it gives rise to “materialism.” In this posting, I shall probe that thought.

The religious sentiment is not, for Tocqueville, the only or even the dominant passion within the human heart. “What most sharply stirs the human heart is not the quiet possession of a precious object but the as yet unsatisfied desire of owning it and the constant fear of losing it.” Democracy in America at 616 (Bevan trans.). In an aristocratic society, where the opportunities for gaining wealth are limited, neither the rich, who already enjoy material prosperity, nor the poor, who have no hope of attaining it, are driven by this passion. In that type of society, “the mind of the poor man is cast forward to the next world; his imagination is cramped by the wretchedness of real life, yet it escapes to seek for joys beyond.” Id. at 617. But in more open and egalitarian societies, where the poor have the chance of becoming wealthy and the rich have more cause to fear the loss of their fortunes, both rich and poor will be “constantly engaged in the pursuit or the preservation of these precious, imperfect, and fugitive delights.” Id. Hence both the hedonism and the restlessness of American society; hence also the threat that American affluence poses for American religion. “Religion is often powerless to restrain man in the face of the countless temptations offered by wealth and cannot moderate his eagerness to become rich, which everything around him helps to stimulate.” Id. at 340.

Tocqueville is both impressed and dismayed by the Americans’ unrelenting drive for wealth. “The passions which stir Americans most deeply are commercial not political ones or more accurately they transfer into politics the methods of business. . . . One must go to America to understand the power of material prosperity over political actions and even those opinions which ought to be governed by reason alone.” Id. at 333. The American pursuit of wealth is “feverish;” it leaves them “ceaselessly tormented.” Id. at 623. Yet their enjoyment of their acquisitions is shadowed by a “secret anxiety.” Id. at 624. They cannot rest content. “In the United States, a man will carefully construct a home in which to spend his old age and sell it before the roof is on; he will plant a garden and will rent it out just as he was about to enjoy its fruit; he will clear a field and leave others to reap the harvest.” Id. at 623. Thus we find “unusual melancholy” and “distaste for life” “in the midst of plenty.” Id. at 625-26. “The man who has set his heart exclusively on the search for the good things of this world is always in a hurry for he has only a limited time to find, grasp, and enjoy them.” Id. at 624. The thought of his mortality “floods his mind with agitation, fear and regret; it holds his soul in a sort of ceaseless nervousness.” Id. Yet if Americans could finally “be[] satisfied with their physical possessions alone,” that would bring them ruin rather than repose: “they would gradually lose the skill of producing them and would end up enjoying them without discernment or improvement like the animals.” Id. at 636.

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