Posted on by Mark Movsesian

New Mattone Center Video: Everson v. Board of Education

The Mattone Center has posted a new video on our YouTube channel about Everson v. Board of Education (1947), one of the Supreme Court’s landmark Establishment Clause cases. In Everson, the Court upheld a New Jersey program that reimbursed parents for transportation costs to parochial as well as public schools. Justice Black’s majority opinion famously explores several arguments about the meaning of the Establishment Clause and has influenced the Court’s jurisprudence ever since.

In our new video, we explain the facts of the case, the Court’s reasoning, and why Everson remains such a touchstone in the law of church and state.

We hope you’ll take a look—and please consider subscribing to the Center’s channel for more explainers on law-and-religion cases and issues.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Wilsey on Religious Freedom

A great benefit of my sabbatical several years ago at Princeton’s James Madison Program was having an office next door to Professor John Wilsey. I always enjoyed and learned a great deal from our hallway conversations. Now lots of other people can benefit, too, since John, a church historian at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is out with a new book, Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer (Eerdmans). Looks very interesting. Here’s the publisher’s description:

In this timely book, historian John D. Wilsey addresses urgent questions about religious freedom in America. How have conservatives historically understood the meaning of religious freedom? How do Americans who identify as conservative now think about religious freedom in this era? What are the differences between the historical and contemporary views, and how do those differences shape fights about religious freedom today?
 
Writing for fellow Americans concerned about threats to religious liberty, Wilsey draws on US history to explain why rather than weaponizing religious freedom in the context of the culture wars, today’s conservatives need to rally around religious freedom to promote peace between church and state. With wisdom and acuity, Wilsey charts a path forward for thinking about and maintaining a uniquely American tradition: the harmony between liberty and religion that each generation has received as an inheritance from the generations preceding theirs.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

The Waldensians and the History of Italian Church-State Relations

The Waldensians are, if one may put it this way, the indigenous Protestants of Italy. Their history goes back centuries and, although their numbers are quite small, they represent a not insignificant part of Italy’s religious culture. A new book from Generis Publishing, Nationalism and Separation of Church and State: Protestant Contributions in Catholic Italy, argues that the group influenced the thought of the 19th Century liberal prime minister, Count Cavour, and thus had an effect on church-state relations during the Risorgimento. The author is Ottavio Palombaro of New College Franklin in Tennessee. Here’s the publisher’s description:

The recent rise of debates concerning Christianity, nationalism and separation of church and state require going back to the roots of such concepts. The advent of modern nationalism meant either the embracement of a positive form of separatism according to the American Revolution, or of a drastic form of separation according to the French Revolution. While the modern state of Italy dealt with the tension between church and state largely through drastic separation, there were some exceptions. Here I intend to investigate what role the Calvinistic understanding of relations between church and state did play through the political involvement of the Waldensians during the movement for Italian independence called Risorgimento (1848-1870). The Calvinistic view of civil government, as stated during that era by the Reformed Pastor Alexandre Vinet, was a determinant factor in the political stand that Waldensian Church took during these times for example through pastors such as Giuseppe Malan or Paolo Geymonat. Their ideas were also reflected beyond the Waldensians in the thought of the first Italian prime minister Camillo Benso conte di Cavour in his formula “free church in a free state.”

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

On Christian Institutionalism in the Early Republic

The proper role of Christianity in American public life has sparked controversy from the beginning. Is the US a Christian nation, and what does that mean, exactly? Or is the US a secular republic? Like France, perhaps? Historian Miles Smith has written a new book, Religion & Republic: Christian America from the Founding to the Civil War, that argues that the true role of Christianity in the early Republic is captured by the phrase “Christian Institutionalism,” in which a public, Protestant Christianity coexisted with official disestablishment. Looks interesting. Here’s the description from the publisher’s website (Davenant):

In recent years, America’s status as a “Christian nation” has become an incredibly vexed question. This is not simply a debate about America’s present, or even its future–it has become a debate about its past. Some want to rewrite America’s history as having always been highly secular in order to ensure a similar future; others seek to reframe the American founding as a continuation of medieval Christendom in the hopes of reviving America’s religious identity today.

In this book, Miles Smith offers a fresh historical reading of America’s status as a Christian nation in the Early Republic era. Defined neither by secularism nor Christendom, America was instead marked by “Christian institutionalism.” Christianity–and Protestantism specifically–was always baked into the American republic’s diplomatic, educational, judicial, and legislative regimes and institutional Christianity in state apparatuses coexisted comfortably with disestablishment from the American Revolution until the beginning of the twenty-first century. 

Any productive discussion about America’s religious present or future must first reckon accurately with its past. With close attention to a wide range of sermons, letters, laws, court cases and more, Religion & Republic offers just such a reckoning

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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • In Solliz v. Knox County, Tennessee, a Muslim woman filed suit after she was required by a Knox County sheriff to remove her hijab for a booking photo following her arrest. The complaint alleged violations of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and the Tennessee Preservation of Religious Freedom Act.
  • A Ukrainian court has extended the detention of an Orthodox bishop for two months after he was arrested for allegedly revealing army positions to the public in a sermon, having mentioned the presence of a road block that prevented access to a local monastery. The bishop was denied the possibility of posting bail, and the checkpoints in question were removed prior to the publication of his sermon online.
  • A petition for certiorari was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, after the Supreme Court of Oklahoma declared the certification of a Catholic-sponsored charter school violative of the state’s constitution and the Establishment Clause. The petition states that the exclusion of religious schools from the state’s charter program violates the Free Exercise Clause, and that the mere funding of religious schools by the state does not constitute state action.
  • The recently-passed Abortion Services Act in Scotland threatens prosecution against anyone praying within a 200-meter radius of an abortion facility, including within their own homes, if they can be seen or heard within the zone, and act in an intentional or reckless manner. Guidance provided by the government to facilitate compliance lists silent vigils and religious preaching as potentially actionable offenses, if conducted intentionally and recklessly.
  • The University of California has continued to deny wrongdoing following a California federal court’s order mandating a variety of measures to prevent the exclusion of Jewish students from parts of campus. The University claims responsibility lies with actors unaffiliated with the school, whereas the plaintiffs maintain the school’s complicity via its failure to act in the face of clear religious discrimination against its students.
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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • In Hope Community Church v. Warner, a federal district court held that a provision in West Virginia’s constitution, which bars churches from being incorporated, is unconstitutional.
  • Several Christians in India were arrested for distributing “religious materials” within government schools, and were charged with propagating religion in an illegal manner.
  • The Supreme Court of the United States is considering a queue of church-and-state related cases, including a Florida synagogue fighting to advertise religious celebrations on public transportation.
  • A Christian woman in Iran was arrested and has been imprisoned for weeks without charges; her family believes officials are subjecting her to brutal interrogation regarding other Christian community members.
  • A school assistant in England, who was fired because of Christian beliefs she expressed on social media, will have her case heard in the Court of Appeal after the initial tribunal held her dismissal lawful.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Reading Group to Discuss John Winthrop

Photo: Partnership of Historic Bostons

Later this month, the Mattone Center Reading Group will meet at St. John’s to discuss one of the most famous essays in American history, John Winthrop’s “Model of Christian Charity.” Winthrop wrote the essay on the ship Arbella in 1630, while he and other Puritan colonists were on their way to Massachusetts. The essay is the source of the much quoted metaphor–itself a Biblical reference–of America as a “city upon a hill.” But what did Winthrop mean, exactly? And how do his words apply today, in a very different America than he could have imagined. Please join us (registration required)! Details below.

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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • In National Religious Broadcasters v. Werfel, filed in federal district court in Texas this week, plaintiffs claim that the Johnson Amendment is unconstitutional as it applies to churches. This amendment prohibits tax-exempt organizations, including churches, from supporting or opposing political candidates.   
  • In Hunter v. U.S. Dep’t of Education, the 9th Circuit held that the religious exemption in Title IX violates neither the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause nor the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
  • In Nunez v. Wolf, the 3rd Circuit found that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections did not have a compelling interest in denying a Muslim inmate religious accommodations.
  • In Couzens v. City of Forest Park, Ohio, the 6th Circuit affirmed that off-duty police officers’ assistance in removing a pastor from a congregation did not violate the pastor’s free exercise rights. The pastor had been dismissed from his position and thus the officers acted reasonably by assisting in his removal.
  • A group of Jewish professors at a New York university petitioned for cert at the Supreme Court in a lawsuit demanding the right to break away from their union’s representation. A lawsuit filed on the professors behalf in 2022 alleged that the union is antisemitic, and that forcing them to be represented by the union is a violation of their First Amendment rights.
  • In Italy, an unusual clash between church and state is publicly taking place. Pope Francis and Italy’s bishops are openly challenging the government’s proposed laws concerning regional autonomy and migration.
Posted on by L&R Forum · 1 Comment

Legal Spirits 060: Memorial Day, the Knights of Columbus, and the National Park Service

Poplar Grove National Cemetery, Petersburg, Virginia

In this episode, Center Director Mark Movsesian interviews religion journalist Kelsey Dallas about the controversy that arose last month when the National Park Service refused to allow the Knights of Columbus to celebrate an annual Memorial Day Mass at a national cemetery in Virginia. The Park Service said it was enforcing the rules against “demonstrations”; the Knights said the refusal violated the group’s religious freedom. Who was right? And what does this controversy reveal about church-state relations in an increasingly secular America? Listen in!

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Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Japanese Integralism?

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There’s a lot of discussion in the American academy today about integralism. The word has various meanings, but the basic definition, as I understand it, is a melding of the spiritual and the political. That is, integralism opposes the Lockean separation of religion and state that has been an essential feature of classical liberalism.

A forthcoming book from Rowman and Littlefield, Religion, State, and Political Culture in Japan: Implications for the Post-Secular World, discusses the relationship of state and religion in Japan. Although it doesn’t use the word, it suggests that Japan has always been rather integralist, in that the country has never had socially influential religions that exist apart from the state. The author, Tokihisa Sumioto (Tokyo Institute for Global Peace and Humanity), appears to argue that Japan should chart a new path. Looks interesting. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Japan had developed a secular civilization long before going through its modern period, characterized by the officially-sanctioned unification of nationalism and state-worship that reached its apotheosis during World War II, followed by the economic growth-oriented post-war period. While the relationship between religion and state has varied significantly over time, what has been consistently observed throughout Japan’s history is the absence of religions that are socially influential but independent from the state, or the absence of a dualistic relationship between religion and state. The kind of political ethos that should underpin democratic principles such as the rule of law and human rights has remained underdeveloped. 

This book examines the concept of “reconstructive postmodernism,” a perspective that has emerged from a normative approach to international relations that emphasizes the need to democratize and humanize the secularistic civilizations based on the reconstruction of spirituality and religiosity. Using this concept, this book offers a number of implications of its findings to the case of Japan and for global governance in the post-secular age more broadly.