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Hinojosa, “Latino Mennonites”

Next month, Johns Hopkins University Press will publish Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith & Evangelical Culture by Felipe Hinojosa (Texas A&M University). The publisher’s description follows.book cover

Felipe Hinojosa’s parents first encountered Mennonite families as migrant workers in the tomato fields of northwestern Ohio. What started as mutual admiration quickly evolved into a relationship that strengthened over the years and eventually led to his parents founding a Mennonite Church in South Texas. Throughout his upbringing as a Mexican American evangélico, Hinojosa was faced with questions not only about his own religion but also about broader issues of Latino evangelicalism, identity, and civil rights politics.

Latino Mennonites offers the first historical analysis of the changing relationship between religion and ethnicity among Latino Mennonites. Drawing heavily on primary sources in Spanish, such as newspapers and oral history interviews, Hinojosa traces the rise of the Latino presence within the Mennonite Church from the origins of Mennonite missions in Latino communities in Chicago, South Texas, Puerto Rico, and New York City, to the conflicted relationship between the Mennonite Church and the California farmworker movements, and finally to the rise of Latino evangelical politics. He also analyzes how the politics of the Chicano, Puerto Rican, and black freedom struggles of the 1960s and 1970s civil rights movements captured the imagination of Mennonite leaders who belonged to a church known more for rural and peaceful agrarian life than for social protest.

Whether in terms of religious faith and identity, race, immigrant rights, or sexuality, the politics of belonging has historically presented both challenges and possibilities for Latino evangelicals in the religious landscapes of twentieth-century America. In Latino Mennonites, Hinojosa has interwoven church history with social history to explore dimensions of identity in Latino Mennonite communities and to create a new way of thinking about the history of American evangelicalism.

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Dingemans, et al., “The Protections for Religious Rights”

This past October, Oxford University Press published The Protections for Religious Rights: Law and Practice by Sir James Dingemans, Can Yeginsu, Tom The Protections for Religious RightsCross, and Hafash Masood. The publisher’s description follows:

The Protections for Religious Rights is the first practitioner work to offer a full and systematic treatment of the law as it pertains to religious rights in the UK and abroad. A practical working aid to a sensitive and important area of increasing litigation and public debate, this text examines the applicable legal instruments, considers the current state of the law, and reviews domestic, comparative, and international case law to provide a comprehensive reference resource that informs on all matters of significance in this area.

The protections for religious rights in the UK are rooted in international law and the English common law. Religious conflicts have arisen when communities have perceived that their religious rights have been targeted for suppression, or ignored. Despite international human rights instruments which are intended to protect such rights, many courts have adopted a narrow and restrictive approach towards these aspects.

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Redgate, “Religion, Politics and Society in Britain, 800-1066”

This March, Routledge will publish Religion, Politics and Society in Britain, 800-1066, by A. E. Redgate (Newcastle University).
redgateThe publisher’s description follows:

Using a comparative and broad perspective, Religion, Politics and Society in Britain 800-1066 draws on archaeology, art history, material culture, texts from charms to chronicles, from royal law-codes to sermons to poems, and other evidence to demonstrate the centrality of Christianity and the Church in Britain 800-1066.  It delineates their contributions to the changes in politics, economy, society and culture that occurred between 800 and 1066, from nation-building to practicalities of government to landscape.

The period 800-1066 saw the beginnings of a fundamental restructuring of politics, society and economy throughout Christian Europe in which religion played a central role. In Britain too the interaction of religion with politics and society was profound and pervasive. There was no part of life which Christianity and the Church did not touch: they affected belief, thought and behaviour at all levels of society.

This book points out interconnections within society and between archaeological, art historical and literary evidence and similarities between aspects of culture not only within Britain but also in comparison with Armenian Christendom. A. E. Redgate explores the importance of religious ideas, institutions, personnel and practices in the creation and expression of identities and communities, the structure and functioning of society and the life of the individual.

This book will be essential reading for students of early medieval Britain and religious and social history.

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Loconte, “God, Locke, and Liberty: The Struggle for Religious Freedom in the West”

This month, Lexington Books will publish God, Locke, and Liberty: The Struggle for Religious Freedom in the West, by Joseph Loconte (The King’s College).locke The publisher’s description follows:

“I no sooner perceived myself in the world,” wrote English philosopher John Locke, “than I found myself in a storm.” The storm of which Locke spoke was the maelstrom of religious fanaticism and intolerance that was tearing apart the social fabric of European society.  His response was A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), arguably the most important defense of religious freedom in the Western tradition.  In God, Locke, and Liberty: The Struggle for Religious Freedom in the West, historian Joseph Loconte offers a groundbreaking study of Locke’s Letter, challenging the notion that decisive arguments for freedom of conscience appeared only after the onset of the secular Enlightenment.  Loconte argues that Locke’s vision of a tolerant and pluralistic society was based on a radical reinterpretation of the life and teachings of Jesus.  In this, Locke drew great strength from an earlier religious reform movement, namely, the Christian humanist tradition.  Like no thinker before him, Locke forged an alliance between liberal political theory and a gospel of divine mercy.  God, Locke, and Liberty suggests how a better understanding of Locke’s political theology could calm the storms of religious violence that once again threaten international peace and security.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Panel on International Religious Freedom in Washington (Feb 25)

The Berkley Center at Georgetown will host a panel discussion tomorrow, “Is International Religious Freedom Policy Becoming Respectable?”:

Some fifteen years after the establishment of the US Office of International Religious Freedom and the position of US ambassador at large (currently vacant), the government of Canada has become the first country to follow suit. In 2012, the Canadian government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper created the Office of Religious Freedom in Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development and in February 2013 appointed its first ambassador, Andrew Bennett. Meanwhile, a (sometimes controversial) mainstay of the US international religious freedom policy is the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, whose job is to sharpen and improve the policy implemented by the State Department. To what extent has the commission been successful? Can the American experience of success and failure help inform Canada’s new policy? What can the United States learn from its neighbor to the north?
Andrew Bennett, Canadian ambassador for religious freedom, and Katrina Lantos Swett, vice chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom will examine these questions. They will also discuss whether the two North American democracies encourage others to increase attention to international religious freedom. Join us as we discuss and debate these and other questions on February 25. Tom Farr, director of the Religious Freedom Project, will moderate.
For details, please click here.
Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

The Weekly Five

Today, the Weekly 5 focuses on American law. We note two pieces on the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood cases–each focusing on different features of those cases–as well articles about copyright law, the parsonage exemption, and legislative prayer.

1. Stephen M. Bainbridge (UCLA), A Critique of the Corporate Law Professors’ Amicus Brief in Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood: Professor Bainbridge criticizes the claims of a number of law professors that principles of corporate law prohibit a corporation from assuming the religious beliefs of its shareholders. Professor Bainbridge argues that the doctrine of reverse veil-piercing provides a mechanism for disregarding the legal separateness of the corporation from its shareholders.

2. James M. Oleske Jr. (Lewis and Clark), Obamacare, RFRA, and the Perils of Legislative History: Professor Oleske argues that the legislative history of RFRA “casts considerable doubt” on the claim (most prominently advanced by Professor Douglas Laycock) that there was universal congressional agreement at the time of RFRA’s passing that the statute would apply to for-profit corporations. Professor Oleske concludes that it would be better for the Court to interpret RFRA in light of its own pre-1990 jurisprudence.

3. Carolyn Homer Thomas (Quinn, Emmanuel), The Copyright Act’s Licensing Exemption for Religious Performances of Religious Works is Unconstitutional. Ms. Thomas argues that the exemption of a licensing requirement for dramatic works with a sufficiently religious content violates the Establishment Clause, relying especially (see pp.  67 and following) on the Supreme Court’s opinion in a RLUIPA case, Cutter v. Wilkinson.

4. Edward A. Zelinsky (Cardozo), The First Amendment and the Parsonage Allowance: Professor Zelinksy discusses the justifications for parsonage exemption, which permits clergy to exclude their housing expenses from taxable income, in the context of criticizing a recent district court opinion striking down the parsonage exemption as a violation of the Establishment Clause.

5. Alan E. Brownstein (UC Davis), Town of Greece v. Galloway: Constitutional Challenges to State Sponsored Prayers at Local Government Meetings: In this lecture, Professor Brownstein considers the Galloway case as well as the constitutionality of legislative prayer generally. Professor Brownstein also offers a set of guidelines that, if followed by a municipality, would render legislative prayer constitutional.

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Kundnani, “The Muslims Are Coming!”

Next month, Random House will publish The Muslims Are Coming!: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror by Arun Kundnani. The Muslims are Coming! The publisher’s description follows.

Death came instantly to Imam Luqman, as four FBI agents fired semiautomatic rifles at him from a few feet away. Another sixty officers surrounded the building on that October morning, the culmination of a two-year undercover investigation that had infiltrated the imam’s Detroit mosque. The FBI quickly claimed that Luqman Abdullah was “the leader of a domestic terrorist group.” And yet, caught on tape, he had refused to help “do something” violent, as it might injure innocents, and no terrorism charges were ever lodged against him.

Jameel Scott thought he was exercising his rights when he went to challenge an Israeli official’s lecture at Manchester University. But the teenager’s presence at the protest with fellow socialists made him the subject of police surveillance for the next two years. Counterterrorism agents visited his parents, his relatives, his school. They asked him for activists’ names and told him not to attend demonstrations. They called his mother and told her to move the family to another neighborhood. Although he doesn’t identify as Muslim, Jameel had become another face of the
presumed homegrown terrorist.

The new front in the War on Terror is the “homegrown enemy,” domestic terrorists who have become the focus of sprawling counterterrorism structures of policing and surveillance in the United States and across Europe. Domestic surveillance has mushroomed—at least 100,000 Muslims in America have been secretly under scrutiny. British police compiled a secret suspect list of more than 8,000 al-Qaeda “sympathizers,” and in another operation included almost 300 children fifteen and under among the potential extremists investigated. MI5 doubled in size in just five years.

Based on several years of research and reportage, in locations as disparate as Texas, New York, and Yorkshire, and written in engrossing, precise prose, this is the first comprehensive critique of counterradicalization strategies. The new policy and policing campaigns have been backed by an industry of freshly minted experts and liberal commentators. The Muslims Are Coming! looks at the way these debates have been transformed by the embrace of a narrowly configured and ill-conceived antiextremism.

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Around the Web This Week

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

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Dreisbach & Hall (eds.), “Faith and the Founders of the American Republic”

9780199843350This April, Oxford University Press will publish Faith and the Founders of the American Republic edited by Daniel L. Dreisbach (American University) and Mark David Hall (George Fox University). The publisher’s description follows.

The role of religion in the founding of America has long been a hotly debated question. Some historians have regarded the views of a few famous founders, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Thomas Paine, as evidence that the founders were deists who advocated the strict separation of church and state. Popular Christian polemicists, on the other hand, have attempted to show that virtually all of the founders were pious Christians in favor of public support for religion.

As the essays in this volume demonstrate, a diverse array of religious traditions informed the political culture of the American founding. Faith and the Founders of the American Republic includes studies both of minority faiths, such as Islam and Judaism, and of major traditions like Calvinism. It also includes nuanced analysis of specific founders-Quaker John Dickinson, prominent Baptists Isaac Backus and John Leland, and Theistic Rationalist Gouverneur Morris, among others-with attention to their personal histories, faiths, constitutional philosophies, and views on the relationship between religion and the state.

This volume will be a crucial resource for anyone interested in the place of faith in the founding of the American constitutional republic, from political, religious, historical, and legal perspectives.

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Abend, “The Moral Background”

k10263This March, Princeton University Press will publish The Moral Background: An Inquiry into the History of Business Ethics by Gabriel Abend (New York University). The publisher’s description follows.

In recent years, many disciplines have become interested in the scientific study of morality. However, a conceptual framework for this work is still lacking. In The Moral Background, Gabriel Abend develops just such a framework and uses it to investigate the history of business ethics in the United States from the 1850s to the 1930s.

According to Abend, morality consists of three levels: moral and immoral behavior, or the behavioral level; moral understandings and norms, or the normative level; and the moral background, which includes what moral concepts exist in a society, what moral methods can be used, what reasons can be given, and what objects can be morally evaluated at all. This background underlies the behavioral and normative levels; it supports, facilitates, and enables them.

Through this perspective, Abend historically examines the work of numerous business ethicists and organizations–such as Protestant ministers, business associations, and business schools–and identifies two types of moral background. “Standards of Practice” is characterized by its scientific worldview, moral relativism, and emphasis on individuals’ actions and decisions. The “Christian Merchant” type is characterized by its Christian worldview, moral objectivism, and conception of a person’s life as a unity.

The Moral Background offers both an original account of the history of business ethics and a novel framework for understanding and investigating morality in general.