In our most recent podcast, Center Director Mark Movsesian and Associate Director Marc DeGirolami discuss last week’s oral argument in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby, the Contraception Mandate case. We address the background of the litigation, the rhetorical strategies adopted by each side, and the major doctrinal questions the Court will need to resolve. We also make predictions about how the Justices will ultimately rule. The podcast will be useful for students and others looking for an introduction to this extremely important case.
Rogers, “The Child Cases: How America’s Religious Exemption Laws Harm Children”
Next month, the University of Massachusetts Press will publish The Child Cases: How America’s Religious Exemption Laws Harm Children by Alan Rogers (Boston College). The publisher’s description follows.
When a four-year-old California girl died on March 9, 1984, the state charged her mother with involuntary man-slaughter because she failed to provide her daughter with medical care, choosing instead to rely on spiritual healing. During the next few years, a half dozen other children of Christian Science parents died under similar circumstances. The children s deaths and the parents trials drew national attention, highlighting a deeply rooted, legal/political struggle to define religious freedom.
Through close analysis of these seven cases, legal historian Alan Rogers explores the conflict between religious principles and secular laws that seek to protect children from abuse and neglect. Christian Scientists argued often with the support of mainline religious groups that the First Amendment s free exercise clause protected religious belief and behavior. Insisting that their spiritual care was at least as effective as medical treatment, they thus maintained that parents of seriously ill children had a constitutional right to reject medical care.
Congress and state legislatures confirmed this interpretation by inserting religious exemption provisos into child abuse laws. Yet when parental prayer failed and a child died, prosecutors were able to win manslaughter convictions by arguing as the U.S. Supreme Court had held for more than a century that religious belief could not trump a neutral, generally applicable law. Children s advocates then carried this message to state legislatures, eventually winning repeal of religious exemption provisions in a handful of states.
Arnason & Karolewski (eds.), “Religion and Politics: European and Global Perspectives”
This month, Edinburgh University Press will publish Religion and Politics: European and Global Perspectives, edited by Johann Arnason (La Trobe University, Melbourne) and Ireneusz Karolewski (University of Wroclaw). The publisher’s description follows.
Combining theoretical and empirical research, these 12 essays examine the role of religion and its prospects in Europe. On the one hand, the volume discusses growing Islamic presence in Europe as a reminder of enduring religious pluralism, not least in view of the high prominence given to Islamic experience in arguments against over-generalised notions of secularisation. On the other hand, it explores the question of Christian motivated extremism and religious nationalism. Against this background, the contributors discuss the role of religion in other countries throughout the world including China, Japan, Russia and the MENA region.
Debates on religion and politics have, to a high degree, focused on contrasts between Europe and other parts of the world; the long-established assumption that modern societies are on a secularising path seemed have a stronger claim to validity in Europe than elsewhere. This book shows that, if European modernity does represent an exit from religion, this historical process and its implications are still very imperfectly understood.