I’m happy to announce the subject for this semester’s meeting of our Center’s Reading Group on Law and Religion: Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. First performed 400 years ago, the play still has the capacity to shock. The questions it poses about political corruption, sexual harassment, and the relationship between law and religion remain relevant today, and the answers are just as elusive.
Please join us on March 26 to discuss this most problematic of Shakespeare’s “problem plays.” As always, we will provide copies of the book ahead of time, so registration is essential. Details are here.
Here in the United States, a common law jurisdiction, it’s possible to get through law school without ever hearing of Justinian. But in civil law jurisdictions, which derive much more closely from Roman law, the Code of Justinian remains influential. For historians of church and state in both traditions, common and civil law, the Code is an important text, an example of the relationship between church and state in the Byzantine Empire–a relationship that is sometimes criticized as “Caesaropapist,” though that oversimplifies things. Last fall, Basic Books released a new biography of Justinian by historian Peter Sarris (Cambridge):Justinian: Emperor, Soldier, Saint. The book addresses the Code as well as the emperor’s many other projects. Here’s the publisher’s description:
Justinian is a radical reassessment of an emperor and his times. In the sixth century CE, the emperor Justinian presided over nearly four decades of remarkable change, in an era of geopolitical threats, climate change, and plague. From the eastern Roman—or Byzantine—capital of Constantinople, Justinian’s armies reconquered lost territory in Africa, Italy, and Spain. But these military exploits, historian Peter Sarris shows, were just one part of a larger program of imperial renewal. From his dramatic overhaul of Roman law, to his lavish building projects, to his fierce persecution of dissenters from Orthodox Christianity, Justinian’s vigorous statecraft—and his energetic efforts at self-glorification—not only set the course of Byzantium but also laid the foundations for the world of the Middle Ages.
Even as Justinian sought to recapture Rome’s past greatness, he paved the way for what would follow.
I’m looking forward to participating tomorrow in a film screening and panel discussion on the history of religious freedom in America at the James Madison Program at Princeton. Details above. Friends of the Forum, stop by and say hello!
This week’s book isn’t exactly about law and religion, but we’re going to give ourselves a little leeway. Next month, SUNY Press will release a new book by one of our former student fellows, John Boersma, who has gone on to an academic career in political theory: Aristotle’s Quarrel with Socrates: Friendship in Political Thought. John, who’s currently a visiting associate professor at Christendom College, argues that Aristotle’s understanding of friendship offers a way to bridge the gap between philosophy and politics–which, come to think of it, sounds relevant to debates about the tension between religion, understood as a private pursuit, and public life. So perhaps John’s book is relevant to law-and-religion after all. Congrats, John! Here’s the publisher’s description:
Aristotle’s Quarrel with Socrates is an account of the role friendship plays in ancient political thought. Examining Platonic dialogues and Aristotle’s ethical and political treatises, John Boersma makes the case that the different stances Aristotle and Socrates take toward politics can be traced to their divergent accounts of friendship. Aristotle’s Quarrel with Socrates brings to the fore the tension that exists between the philosophic life as exemplified by Socrates and the life devoted to politics. It goes on to argue that Aristotle’s account of a friendship of the good, based on human excellence, can reduce, not to say eliminate, this tension, enabling the development of a political community that is organized for action in history.
In researching a chapter for a book on international relations last fall, I read a great deal about the efforts of Protestant missionaries–mostly American, but also European–in the 19th century Ottoman Empire. The missionaries had a large impact among local Christians, especially Armenians, founding schools and cultural institutions and generally preaching Western values. They had rather less impact on the foreign policies of their home countries, a matter I address in the chapter. For those who are interested, a draft version of the chapter is here.
Protestant missionaries weren’t active only in Ottoman Turkey, of course. They probably had a greater presence in China. In fact, some scholars argue that the missionaries were a major factor in U.S. policy towards China. That probably overstates things. Foreign policy tends to respond to national interests rather than religious and moral appeals. But the missionaries’ presence did provide a reason–an excuse?–for Western intervention. A new book from Notre Dame Press explores the activities of British Protestant missionaries in 19th century China. The book is Protestant Missionaries in China, by Jonathan Seitz (Taiwan Graduate School of Theology). Here’s the publisher’s description:
With a focus on Robert Morrison, Protestant Missionaries in China evaluates the role of nineteenth-century British missionaries in the early development of the cross-cultural relationship between China and the English-speaking world.
As one of the first generation of British Protestant missionaries, Robert Morrison went to China in 1807 with the goal of evangelizing the country. His mission pushed him into deeper engagement with Chinese language and culture, and the exchange flowed both ways as Morrison—a working-class man whose firsthand experiences made him an “accidental expert”—brought depictions of China back to eager British audiences. Author Jonathan A. Seitz proposes that, despite the limitations imposed by the orientalism impulse of the era, Morrison and his fellow missionaries were instrumental in creating a new map of cross-cultural engagement that would evolve, ultimately, into modern sinology.
Engaging and well researched, Protestant Missionaries in China explores the impact of Morrison and his contemporaries on early sinology, mission work, and Chinese Christianity during the three decades before the start of the Opium Wars.
Next month at Princeton University, I’ll be participating in a film screening and panel discussion on religious liberty in the United States, “Free Exercise: America’s Story of Religious Liberty.” The event is sponsored by Princeton’s James Madison Program, where I spent a wonderful semester a few years ago. Details are available here. Friends of the Forum in the area, stop by and say hello!
I tell students in my law-and-religion seminar here at St. John’s, if you want to understand the sociology of religion in the United States, you can’t do better than to start with Tocqueville. Some of his observations are familiar, for example, on the role of voluntary religious associations in helping to check tyranny. Some are not, for example, on the tendency of religion in the United States to lead towards pantheism. All are insightful.
This month, Princeton University Press has released a new biography of the French aristocrat who understood American democracy better than anyone else, The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville, by historian and Tocqueville scholar Olivier Zunz (University of Virginia). The publisher’s description follows:
In 1831, at the age of twenty-five, Alexis de Tocqueville made his fateful journey to America, where he observed the thrilling reality of a functioning democracy. From that moment onward, the French aristocrat would dedicate his life as a writer and politician to ending despotism in his country and bringing it into a new age. In this authoritative and groundbreaking biography, leading Tocqueville expert Olivier Zunz tells the story of a radical thinker who, uniquely charged by the events of his time, both in America and France, used the world as a laboratory for his political ideas.
Placing Tocqueville’s dedication to achieving a new kind of democracy at the center of his life and work, Zunz traces Tocqueville’s evolution into a passionate student and practitioner of liberal politics across a trove of correspondence with intellectuals, politicians, constituents, family members, and friends. While taking seriously Tocqueville’s attempts to apply the lessons of Democracy in America to French politics, Zunz shows that the United States, and not only France, remained central to Tocqueville’s thought and actions throughout his life. In his final years, with France gripped by an authoritarian regime and America divided by slavery, Tocqueville feared that the democratic experiment might be failing. Yet his passion for democracy never weakened.
Giving equal attention to the French and American sources of Tocqueville’s unique blend of political philosophy and political action, The Man Who Understood Democracy offers the richest, most nuanced portrait yet of a man who, born between the worlds of aristocracy and democracy, fought tirelessly for the only system that he believed could provide both liberty and equality.
Scholars debate the extent to which Lockean ideas about religious freedom, which were so important to the Framers, are consistent with Christianity. An interesting-looking new book from the University Press of Kansas, Everyone Orthodox to Themselves: John Locke and His American Students on Religion and American Society, argues that Lockean liberalism is consistent only with a specific kind of Christianity, namely, a rationalist, non-dogmatic sort. The author, politics professor John Colman (Ave Maria), apparently maintains that conservative Christians are mistaken when they think their commitments compatible with religious freedom. Readers can decide for themselves. Here is the description from the publisher’s website:
Religious liberty is one of the hallmarks of American democracy, but the principal architects of this liberty believed that it was only compatible with a certain form of Christianity—namely, a liberal, rational, Christianity. Conservative and postliberal champions of the freedom of religion often ignore this point, sometimes even arguing that orthodox Christianity was, or should be, at the root of democratic liberty.
Everyone Orthodox to Themselves, John Colman’s close study of the religious views and political theologies of John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson, shows otherwise. Colman demonstrates that Locke and his three American students specifically took aim at the idea of orthodoxy, which they argued continuously tempted its believers to try to impose an artificial uniformity upon the religious diversity that naturally exists in society and thought it necessary to advance a more rational, nondogmatic Christianity given the threat they saw religious orthodoxy posed to a free, liberal society.
While recent arguments have endorsed the idea that there is a crisis of liberalism that can only be met by the revival of more orthodox forms of religious devotion, Colman argues that, according to some of the most prominent American Founders and their philosophic predecessors, such orthodoxy is incompatible with religious freedom and the right to free inquiry. Everyone Orthodox to Themselves demonstrates that only a nondogmatic, rationalist Christianity could be made a friend rather than an adversary to the inalienable right of religious liberty.
Colman’s work reveals how the reform of Christianity, and with it the inculcation of a particular theological disposition, is necessary to secure religious liberty and the right of free inquiry. The book also establishes the importance of Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity for his larger argument for toleration.
Here is an interesting-looking collection of essays from Baylor on the history of Evangelical Christians and politics–especially, the politics of religious freedom: The Gospel and Religious Freedom: Historical Studies in Evangelicalism and Political Engagement. Like most religious communities, Evangelicals have a mixed record in this regard, supporting religious freedom in some contexts and opposing it in others. The book’s chapters cover episodes from Wilberforce to Trump. The editor is David Bebbington (University of Stirling-Scotland). Here’s the publisher’s description:
Religious freedom as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains a perennial concern across the globe. Over the centuries many evangelicals have not enjoyed this right in practice, but they have generally advocated its acceptance, especially to allow the spread of the gospel. Not always, however, have they supported freedom for religious groups besides themselves and sometimes they have endorsed discrimination against other bodies.
The Gospel and Religious Freedom explores the complex relationship in theory and practice between evangelicals and religious freedom, covering periods from the eighteenth century to the present. The volume includes studies of the intellectual lineage of asserting the free exercise of religion, of evangelicals in the United States who endorsed religious liberty in the early twentieth century, and of recent American evangelical political pressure on behalf of freedom of religion at home and abroad. Other contributions address the evangelical defense of the cause in British territories in the age of William Wilberforce, the apparent threat to religious liberty by Roman Catholics throughout the world, an evangelical attempt to restrain Muslim laws in Nigeria, and the persecution of believers by Communists in Eastern Europe and China.
Evangelical Christians emerge as preeminently concerned with evangelism but in other respects diverse in their responses to challenges in various global regions. This volume is designed to demonstrate something of the significance of the evangelical movement in the history of the modern world.
Thanks to the Federalist Society for inviting me to participate on a panel yesterday at the annual faculty conference, underway in Washington. I joined Amy Sepinwall (Wharton) and Dale Carpenter (Southern Methodist) for a discussion of 303 Creative, the wedding vendor case. Among the issues we addressed were the application of strict scrutiny to speech compulsions; the distinction between speech and conduct; and discriminating based on message vs. discrimination based on status. The video is linked below:
