Posted on by Nathan Oman

Markets, Religion, and the Limits of Privacy

In modern, Western societies religion is tied up with the idea of privacy. In the wake of the Wars of Religion, religious and political thinkers invented the idea of a private sphere in which one could practice one’s religion separately from the public sphere of political action. The idea of privatizing religion has proven powerful and on the whole hugely beneficial. It allows for religious toleration and religious pluralism without suppressing religious belief and practice. Believers must simply keep their religion private, or perhaps more precisely we define as private the religious behavior that we are willing to tolerate.

The same seventeenth- and eighteenth-century world that used the idea of privacy to manage religion also employed the idea of private activity to make sense of the increasingly important role of markets in society. Aristotle thought of economic activity as part of the government of the household, which of course was seen as a private (and therefore not particularly important) realm as opposed to the public space of the agora, were the important aspects of life occurred.

By the time the Wars of Religion were winding down in the mid-seventeenth-century, however, commerce had become politically important. At the same time, the relocation of religion (and with it the ultimate questions of the good life) to the private sphere had rendered what went on there of far greater importance than it had been for Aristotle and his successors. By the eighteenth-century we had a whole new field – economics – that was focused on thinking about commercial life as a distinct sphere, and with the rise of nineteenth-century liberalism, this commercial activity – like religion – was conceptualized as a private matter, one where the collective decision-making of politics was to hold limited sway.

Many of the current skirmishes over law and religion are less about the relationship of God and Caesar than they are about the law regulating the relationship between God and Mammon. Cases like Hobby Lobby or the debates over anti-discrimination law and state Read more

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“Women and Religious Traditions” (Anderson & Young, eds.)

Last month, Oxford University Press released “Women and Religious Traditions” edited by Leona M. Anderson (University of Regina) and Pamela Dickey Young (Queen’s University). The publisher’s description follows:

Women and Religious Traditions uses a critical feminist lens to explore the roles and interactions of women with major world faith traditions. Within each particular tradition, the text examines the history and status of women, family structures, sexuality, and social change, as well as texts, rituals, and interpretations by and for women.

Thirteen experts contribute nine chapters and five case studies, including a new case study on women in Chinese traditions. This third edition builds on the strengths of the first two, with the addition of lived religion content in each chapter, an expanded introduction to the study of women and religion, new research on Buddhist nuns, and up-to-date material on women’s current political position in Islamic countries.

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Tamadonfar, “Islamic Law and Governance in Contemporary Iran: Transcending Islam for Social, Economic, and Political Order”

In May, Lexington Books will release “Islamic Law and Governance in Contemporary Iran: Transcending Islam for Social, Economic, and Political Order” by Tehran Tamadonfar (University of Nevada). The publisher’s description follows:

The current rise of Islamism throughout the Muslim world, Islamists’ demand for the establishment of Islamic states, and their destabilizing impact on regional and global orders have raised important questions about the origins of Islamism and the nature of an Islamic state. Beginning with the Iranian revolution of the late 1970s and the establishment of the Islamic Republic to today’s rise of ISIS to prominence, it has become increasingly apparent that Islamism is a major global force in the twenty-first century that demands acknowledgment and answers.

As a highly-integrated belief system, the Islamic worldview rejects secularism and accounts for a prominent role for religion in the politics and laws of Muslim societies. Islam is primarily a legal framework that covers all aspects of Muslims’ individual and communal lives. In this sense, the Islamic state is a logical instrument for managing Muslim societies. Even moderate Muslims who genuinely, but not necessarily vociferously, challenge the extremists’ strategies are not dismissive of the political role of Islam and the viability of an Islamic state. However, sectarian and scholastic schisms within Islam that date back to the prophet’s demise do undermine any possibility of consensus about the legal, institutional, and policy parameters of the Islamic state.

Within its Shi’a sectarian limitations, this book attempts to offer some answers to questions about the nature of the Islamic state. Nearly four decades of experience with the Islamic Republic of Iran offers us some insights into such a state’s accomplishments, potentials, and challenges. While the Islamic worldview offers a general framework for governance, this framework is in dire need of modification to be applicable to modern societies. As Iranians have learned, in the realm of practical politics, transcending the restrictive precepts of Islam is the most viable strategy for building a functional Islamic state. Indeed, Islam does provide both doctrinal and practical instruments for transcending these restrictions. This pursuit of pragmatism could potentially offer impressive strategies for governance as long as sectarian, scholastic, and autocratic proclivities of authorities do not derail the rights of the public and their demand for an orderly management of their societies.

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Claassen, “Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans”

This June, Cambridge University Press will release “Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans: Party Activists, Party Capture, and the ‘God Gap’” by Ryan L. Klaassen (Kent State University).  The publisher’s description follows:

Godless DemocratsDo Evangelical activists control the Republican Party? Do secular activists control the Democratic Party? In Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans?, Ryan Claassen carefully assesses the way campaign activists represent religious and non-religious groups in American political parties dating back to the 1960s. By providing a new theoretical framework for investigating the connections between macro social and political trends, the results challenge a conventional wisdom in which recently mobilized religious and Secular extremists captured the parties and created a God gap. The new approach reveals that very basic social and demographic trends matter far more than previously recognized and that mobilization matters far less. The God gap in voting is real, but it was not created by Christian Right mobilization efforts and a Secular backlash. Where others see culture wars and captured parties, Claassen finds many religious divisions in American politics are artifacts of basic social changes. This very basic insight leads to many profoundly different conclusions about the motivations of religious and non-religious activists and voters.

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Goldscheider, “Israeli Society in the Twenty-First Century”

This June, Brandeis University Press will release “Israeli Society in the Twenty-First Century: Immigration, Inequality and Religious Conflict” by Calvin Goldscheider (Brown University).  The publisher’s description follows:

Israeli Society in the Twenty-First CenturyThis volume illuminates changes in Israeli society over the past generation. Goldscheider identifies three key social changes that have led to the transformation of Israeli society in the twenty-first century: the massive immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union, the economic shift to a high-tech economy, and the growth of socioeconomic inequalities inside Israel. To deepen his analysis of these developments, Goldscheider focuses on ethnicity, religion, and gender, including the growth of ethnic pluralism in Israel, the strengthening of the Ultra-Orthodox community, the changing nature of religious Zionism and secularism, shifts in family patterns, and new issues and challenges between Palestinians and Arab Israelis given the stalemate in the peace process and the expansions of Jewish settlements.

Combining demography and social structural analysis, the author draws on the most recent data available from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics and other sources to offer scholars and students an innovative guide to thinking about the Israel of the future.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary Israel, the Middle East, sociology, demography and economic development, as well as policy specialists in these fields. It will serve as a textbook for courses in Israeli history and in the modern Middle East.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Happy Easter

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Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem

A Happy Easter to all who celebrate. Christ is Risen.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Welcome to Nate Oman!

A warm welcome to Professor Nate Oman, who will be our guest for the month. nbomanNate teaches at the William & Mary Law School, and his most recent publications include International Legal Experience and the Mormon Theology of the State, 1945-2012, 100 Iowa L. Rev. 715 (2015) and an excellent co-authored piece on the Hobby Lobby case, Hobby Lobby, Corporate Law, and the Theory of the Firm: Why For-Profit Corporations are RFRA Persons, 124 Harv. L. Rev. F. 273 (2014) (with Alan Meese).

Nate has just finished a book manuscript on the philosophy of contract law that offers doux commerce as a justification for contract law. He is writing about different theories of how the law should structure the relationship between commerce and religion. His first post with us, Indiana and Doux Commerce, is up today. Great to have you with us, Nate.

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Around the Web this Week

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

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Discussion on “The Gathering Storm: Religious Persecution and Legislative Responses” (Georgetown University, April 15)

On April 15, the Religious Freedom Project, in cooperation with Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, will host a discussion “The Gathering Storm: Religious Persecution and Legislative Responses:”

Two of the most prominent advocates for advancing religious freedom in foreign policy, Baroness Elizabeth Berridge and former Congressman Frank Wolf, will discuss how Western democracies can advance international religious freedom. They will also explore how internal disarray over the meaning and reach of religious liberty affects the ability of nations to advance religious freedom in their foreign policies. The Berkley Center’s Tom Farr will moderate.

Find more information and RSVP here.

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Rieck, “The Shias of Pakistan: An Assertive and Beleaguered Minority”

This month, Oxford University Press will release “The Shias of Pakistan: An Assertive and Beleaguered Minority” by Andreas Rieck. The publisher’s description follows:

The Shias of Pakistan are the world’s second largest Shia community after that of Iran, but comprise only 10-15 per cent of Pakistan’s population. In recent decades Sunni extremists have increasingly targeted them with hate propaganda and terrorism, yet paradoxically Shias have always been fully integrated into all sections of political, professional and social life without suffering any discrimination. In mainstream politics, the Shia- Sunni divide has never been an issue in Pakistan.

Shia politicians in Pakistan have usually downplayed their religious beliefs, but there have always been individuals and groups who emphasised their Shia identity, and who zealously campaigned for equal rights for the Shias wherever and whenever they perceived these to be threatened. Shia ‘ulama’ have been at the forefront of communal activism in Pakistan since 1949, but Shia laymen also participated in such organisations, as they had in pre-partition India.

Based mainly on Urdu sources, Rieck’s book examines, first, the history of Pakistan’s Shias, including their communal organisations, the growth of the Shia ‘ulama’ class, of religious schools and rivalry between ” and popular preachers; second, the outcome of lobbying of successive Pakistan governments by Shia organisations; and third, the Shia-Sunni conflict, which is increasingly virulent due to the state’s failure to combat Sunni extremism.