Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

CFP: the Fifth Annual Religious Legal Theory Conference at Emory Law School

I am delighted to announce a call for papers for the Religious Legal Theory Conference, now in its fifth year. Mark and I were pleased to host the conference in its second incarnation, where the theme was Religion in Law, Law in Religion.

This year’s conference is being put together by the superb Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory Law School, which is directed by the éminence grise of law and religion, John Witte. The theme this year is A Global Conversation: Exploring Interfaith and International Models for the Interaction of Religion and State. The conference will be held on February 24-25, 2014. Paper proposals are due November 30, 2013, with notification shortly thereafter. Please contact Dr. Mark Goldfeder of Emory Law School with your proposal.

Below the fold, the conference description and details of the call for papers. Read more

Posted on by JCPW

Around the Web This Week

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

Posted on by JCPW · 1 Comment

Bremer, “Cross and Kremlin”

9780802869623This October, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company published Cross and Kremlin: A Brief History of the Orthodox Church in Russia by Thomas Bremer (University of Münster). The publisher’s description follows, and the author writes more about the book here.

Cross and Kremlin uniquely surveys both the history and the contemporary situation of the Russian Orthodox Church. The first chapter gives a concise chronology from the tenth century through the present day. The following chapters highlight several important issues and aspects of Russian Orthodoxy — church-state relations, theology, ecclesiastical structure, monasticism, spirituality, the relation of Russian Orthodoxy to the West, dissidence as a frequent phenomenon in Russian church history, and more.

Posted on by JCPW

Hagedorn & Kratz (eds.), “Law and Religion in the Eastern Mediterranean”

51lPAT2tXBLThis November, Oxford University Press will publish Law and Religion in the Eastern Mediterranean: From Antiquity to Early Islam edited by Anselm C. Hagedorn (Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin) and Reinhard G. Kratz (Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen). The publisher’s description follows.

How was it possible that Greeks often wrote their laws on the walls of their temples, but — in contrast to other ancient societies — never transformed these written civic laws into a religious law? Did it matter whether laws were inscribed in stone, clay, or on a scroll? And above all, how did written law shape a society in which the majority population was illiterate?

This volume addresses the similarities and differences in the role played by law and religion in various societies across the Eastern Mediterranean. Bringing together a collection of 14 essays from scholars of the Hebrew Bible, Ancient Greece, the Ancient Near East, Qumran, Elephantine, the Nabateans, and the early Arab world, it also approaches these subjects in an all-encompassing manner, looking in detail at the notion of law and religion in the Eastern Mediterranean as a whole in both the geographical as well as the historical space.