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Schäfer, “The Jewish Jesus”

Next month, Princeton University Press will publish The Jewish Jesus by Peter Schäfer (Princeton University). The publisher’s description follows.bookjacket

In late antiquity, as Christianity emerged from Judaism, it was not only the new religion that was being influenced by the old. The rise and revolutionary challenge of Christianity also had a profound influence on rabbinic Judaism, which was itself just emerging and, like Christianity, trying to shape its own identity. In The Jewish Jesus, Peter Schäfer reveals the crucial ways in which various Jewish heresies, including Christianity, affected the development of rabbinic Judaism. The result is a demonstration of the deep mutual influence between the sister religions, one that calls into question hard and fast distinctions between orthodoxy and heresy, and even Judaism and Christianity, during the first centuries CE.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Barack Obama and the Politics of the Nones

She means it as a compliment. At OnFaith, author Diana Butler Bass writes that President Barack Obama is reinventing American civil religion for the spiritual-but-not-religious age. It is “obvious,” she writes, “that the God of Obama’s public speech is not the God of previous presidents.” He has “moved beyond specifically biblical images and language toward a broader set of spiritual themes to speak to for a diverse American future.”

To illustrate, Bass offers the president’s use of the term “journey” in his second inaugural address. Journey, she explains, “is not only a biblical image”:

It is a central theme to many faiths: the Buddhist seeking enlightenment; a Native American on a vision quest; a Muslim embarked on the Hajj; a Jew hoping for “next year in Jerusalem” at Passover; a Catholic visiting a shrine; a Protestant tracing the footsteps of Martin Luther; a Wiccan making a way to Stonehenge; a humanist celebrating Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. We are a nation of spiritual migrants and immigrants, a restless sort of people, on innumerable sojourns paying homage to our saints and heroes, always searching out new meaning in the universe we inhabit. . . .

President Obama proposed … a journey toward a deep realization of community, prosperity, mutual care, stewardship of the Earth, peacemaking, and human rights. These six ideals form an American creed, the fundamental aspects of the democratic project. Each one of these could be interpreted as Christian or Jewish (as they have traditionally been) or could be much more widely understood through other religious perspectives. The address ended with a call to action: Serve the poor, have hope in the future, renew your hearts. Make new the nation’s ancient covenant of justice and equality in this uncertain world. Create a new American future.

Bass writes that future historians may well see President Obama’s redefinition of our civil religion–what she calls his “innovative form of pluralistic post-religious civil discourse”–as one of his “greatest achievements.” I assume she’s not being ironic.

It’s easy to chuckle at Bass’s earnest enthusiasm, but she may be onto something. America is now, and will for the foreseeable future remain, an overwhelmingly Christian nation. That’s just demography. The percentage of Americans who adhere to non-Christian religions, although growing, remains very small. But, since around 1990, there has been a large increase in people who claim no religious identity at all–the so-called “Nones.” By some accounts, Nones now make up about 20% of the general population and about 30% of young Americans. These are dramatic numbers, indeed.

The sort of all-inclusive, vaguely spiritual language Bass cites seems crafted to appeal to Nones. Surveys show that Nones don’t object to spirituality as such. Rather, they object to organized religions, especially organized religions that make exclusive truth claims. So the president’s language may reflect a recognition of a new force in American politics. If the evangelical imagery of George W. Bush was, as critics complained, a kind of dog whistle to call out his base, perhaps the New Age imagery of Barack Obama is a kind of dog whistle to call out his. It seems to be working. According to Bass, in the 2012 election, Nones overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama.

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Garrioch, “The Huguenots of Paris and the Coming of Religious Freedom, 1685-1789”

Next month, Cambridge University Press will publish The Huguenots of Paris and the Coming of Religious Freedom, 1685-1789 by David Garrioch (Monash University). The publisher’s description follows.

How did the Huguenots of Paris survive, and even prosper, in the eighteenth century when the majority Catholic population was notorious for its hostility to Protestantism? Why, by the end of the Old Regime, did public opinion overwhelmingly favour giving Huguenots greater rights? This study of the growth of religious toleration in Paris traces the specific history of the Huguenots after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685. David Garrioch identifies the roots of this transformation of attitudes towards the minority Huguenot population in their own methods of resistance to persecution and pragmatic government responses to it, as well as in the particular environment of Paris. Above all, this book identifies the extraordinary shift in Catholic religious culture that took place over the century as a significant cause of change, set against the backdrop of cultural and intellectual transformation that we call the Enlightenment.

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Jung, Petersen, & Lei Sparre, “Politics of Modern Muslim Subjectivities”

Earlier this month, Palgrave Macmillan published Politics of Modern Muslim Subjectivities: Islam, Youth, and Social Activism in the Middle East by Dietrich Jung (University of Southern Denmark), Marie Petersen (Danish Institute for Human Rights), and Sara Lei Sparre (Roskilde University). The publisher’s description follows.

This book provokes a debate between social theory and Islamic studies. Drawing on theories of successive modernities, sociology of religion, and poststructuralist approaches to modern subjectivity formation, it introduces a novel analytical framework to the study of Middle Eastern societies. The authors explore ways in which Muslims have constructed meaningful modern selfhoods, providing their reader with unique insights into the ongoing social transformation of the Middle East. Making Islamic charities and youth organizations their primary site of investigation, they combine studies on Islamic reform with case studies on social activism in Egypt and Jordan. In criticizing theses about the alleged uniqueness of Western modernity, the book challenges exclusivist assumptions about both Western modernity and contemporary Islamic ways of life. In this way, it makes original contributions to conceptual discussions on modernity and our knowledge of modern Muslim societies.

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Larson, “Master of Penance: Gratian and the Development of Penitential Thought and Law in the Twelfth Century”

This month, The Catholic University of America Press will publish Master of Penance: Gratian and the Development of Penitential Thought and Law in the Master of PenanceTwelfth Century by Atria A. Larson (The Catholic University of America ).  The publisher’s description follows.

This book presents the first full-scale study of the Tractatus de penitentia (C.33 q.3) in Gratian’s Decretum, which became the textbook for canon law and served as the basis of the church’s developing jurisprudence, in theory and in practice. The treatise on penance stands out as a distinct, overtly theological section of Gratian’s work and was long suspected of being a later addition to the Decretum. As a result, the treatise has not received thorough treatment and has often not been included in scholars’ general discussions of Gratian’s work, its nature, and its purpose. Manuscript discoveries in the 1990s proved the treatise to be authentic and to be part of Gratian’s early drafting of his text. This study examines the treatise in its entirety, providing a commentary on the content of the treatise (which extends beyond questions of penance) and an examination of its relationship to the early twelfth-century schools, positing above all a connection to the school of Anselm of Laon. The study also re-examines the question of the nature and purpose of Gratian’s Decretum in light of the original inclusion of De penitentia and of Gratian’s role as a teacher, or master.

The second half of the book traces the influence of De penitentia in the second half of the twelfth century and through the pontificate of Innocent, culminating in the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). That period was crucial for the development of systematic theology and ecclesiastical jurisprudence. Nevertheless, the period was also one in which boundaries between academic fields were far from solidified, which the treatment of De penitentia by various intellectuals demonstrates. The period witnessed as well the development of new kinds of penitential literature and an increase of business at the papal curia. Gratian’s De penitentia exercised influence in both realms. In brief, Gratian’s De penitentia constituted the fundamental text on penance in the period.

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Sirota, “The Christian Monitors: The Church of England and The Age of Benevolence, 1680-1730”

This month, Yale University Press published The Christian Monitors: The Church of England and The Age of Benevolence, 1680-1730 by Brent S. Sirota The Christian Monitors(North Carolina State University).  The publisher’s description follows.

This original and persuasive book examines the moral and religious revival led by the Church of England before and after the Glorious Revolution, and shows how that revival laid the groundwork for a burgeoning civil society in Britain. After outlining the Church of England’s key role in the increase of voluntary, charitable, and religious societies, Brent Sirota examines how these groups drove the modernization of Britain through such activities as settling immigrants throughout the empire, founding charity schools, distributing devotional literature, and evangelizing and educating merchants, seamen, and slaves throughout the British empire—all leading to what has been termed the “age of benevolence.”

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Supreme Court Order Keeps Injunction in Place in Little Sisters Case

The Supreme Court has issued the following order in the case of Little Sisters of the Poor et al. v. Sebelius:

The application for an injunction having been submitted to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court, the Court orders: If the employer applicants inform the Secretary of Health and Human Services in writing that they are non-profit organizations that hold themselves out as religious and have religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services, the respondents are enjoined from enforcing against the applicants the challenged provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and related regulations pending final disposition of the appeal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. To meet the condition for injunction pending appeal, applicants need not use the form prescribed by the Government and need not send copies to third-party administrators. The Court issues this order based on all of the circumstances of the case, and this order should not be construed as an expression of the Court’s views on the merits.

It’s always hard to interpret all that much from an order as short as this, but a few things are clear.

First, the injunction stays in place. The Little Sisters can just send the government a copy of their complaint. Second, and notwithstanding the final sentence of the order, at least some of the Court seems to have understood the Little Sisters’ argument–that is, that signing the certification and designation of a third party administrator to provide contraceptive products is a violation of their religious liberty under RFRA. If the Court had not understood it, or had disagreed with it, the injunction would not have remained in place. Third, and in consequence, this order represents another victory, albeit a cryptic one and one of uncertain duration, for the plaintiffs in these nonprofit cases.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

Too “Christian” to Excite the Left, Too “Foreign” to Excite the Right

Here’s a great piece by The Week’s Michael Brendan Dougherty on the persecution of Mideast Christians. Doughtery offers an explanation for why the human rights community in the West is largely ignoring the problem:

Western activists and media have focused considerable outrage at Russia’s laws against “homosexual propaganda” in the lead-up to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. It would only seem fitting that Westerners would also protest (or at the very least notice) laws that punish people with death for converting to Christianity.

And yet the Western world is largely ignorant of or untroubled by programmatic violence against Christians. Ed West, citing the French philosopher Regis Debray, distils the problem thusly: “The victims are ‘too Christian’ to excite the Left, and ‘too foreign’ to excite the Right.”

That really says it quite well.

Posted on by JCPW

Around the Web

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

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Mercadante, “Belief Without Borders”

9780199931002Next month, Oxford University Press will publish Belief without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but Not Religious by Linda A. Mercadante (Methodist Theological School, Ohio). The publisher’s description follows.

The last twenty years have seen a dramatic increase in “nones”: people who do not claim any religious affiliation. These “nones” now outnumber even the largest Protestant denominations in America. They are not to be confused with secularists, however, for many of them identify themselves as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). The response to this dramatic change in American religion has been amazingly mixed. While social scientists have been busy counting and categorizing them, the public has swung between derision and adulation. Some complain “nones” are simply shallow dilettantes, narcissistically concerned with their own inner world. Others hail them as spiritual giants, and ground-breaking pioneers. Rarely, however, have these “nones” been asked to explain their own views, beliefs, and experiences. In Belief without Borders, theologian and one-time SBNR Linda Mercadante finally gives these individuals a chance to speak for themselves.

This volume is the result of extensive observation and nearly 100 in-depth interviews with SBNRs across the United States. Mercadante presents SBNRs’ stories, shows how they analyze their spiritual journeys, and explains why they reject the claims of organized religion. Surprisingly, however, Mercadante finds these SBNRs within as well as outside the church. She reveals the unexpected, emerging latent theology within this group, including the interviewees’ creative concepts of divine transcendence, life after death, human nature, and community. The conclusions she draws are startling: despite the fact that SBNRs routinely discount the creeds and doctrines of organized religion, many have devised a structured set of beliefs, often purposefully in opposition to doctrines associated with Christianity.