For several decades, culture played a central role in challenging the liberal tradition. More recently however, religion has re-emerged as one of the central challenges facing Western liberal societies’ conception of multiculturalism. Mapping the Legal Boundaries of Belonging explores the complex relationship between religion and multiculturalism and the role of the state and law in the creation of boundaries.
The intersection between religion, nationalism and other vectors of difference in Canada and Israel offer an ideal laboratory in which to examine multiculturalism in particular and the governance of diversity in general. The contributors to this volume investigate concepts of religious difference and diversity and the ways in which these two states and legal systems understand and respond to them. As a consequence of a purportedly secular human rights perspective, they show, state laws may appear to define religious identity in a way that contradicts the definition found within a particular religion. Both state and religion make the same mistake if they take a court decision that emphasizes individual belief and practice as effecting a direct modification of a religious norm: the court lacks the power to change the authoritative internal definition of who belongs to a particular faith. Similarly, in the pursuit of a particular model of social diversity, the state may adopt policies that imply a particular private/public distinction foreign to some religious traditions.
Rod Dreher’s post at The American Conservative, Ghosts of Colson & Neuhaus, is exceptionally interesting. It summarizes the discussions at a recent seminar hosted by First Things editor Rusty Reno, including both Catholics and non-Catholics, on the state of the culture, and more particularly on the state of the American Catholic Church. Much of the focus was on the current generation of students. There’s a lot here, but one issue stood out for me: the real debate within American Catholicism.
As one of the participants at the seminar argued, there really is not, despite the media, a major debate between “liberal” and “conservative” American Catholics. There is indeed a political debate between liberals and conservatives, but it does not map on to any important debate within the American Church. “Liberal” Catholics are Catholics on their way out the door. Their children will be either non-Catholic or else serious Catholic believers. “Liberal” Catholicism is like “liberal” Protestantism: a way station to something else. At best, it will survive as a cultural inflection; it has no chance of being a living faith.
The deeper and more fascinating debate is between those who think that American Catholicism is compatible with this country’s political regime, and the “radicals” who deny it. The accommodationists, to call them that, trace back to Fr John Courtney Murray and nowadays include people like Robert George and George Weigel. The radicals include Alistair Macintyre and others less well known to me. The accommodationists think that there is a lot wrong, to be sure, with American culture and politics, and that the problems may have begun as long ago as the Progressive Era; but they also think institutional reform is both necessary and (still) possible. They want to reinvigorate core institutions of American civil society like the family, the Church, and other voluntary associations.
The accommodationists can point to a period like the 1940s and 1950s to show that American society can be, not just tolerant, but even receptive, to Catholicism. They would probably distinguish between two kinds of American liberalism – the classical liberalism of the Founders, and the liberalism of the present. The former regarded government as, essentially, a scaffolding or a set of neutral procedures, allowing citizens to pursue their private projects peaceably within an agreed-upon framework. The latter kind of liberalism posits that the State exists to pursue certain substantive goods. Both forms of liberalism rest on a conception of the sovereignty of the individual, but the latter form assumes that the State must play a more active role in bringing about the conditions in which individual choice can flourish. Since that form of liberalism regards the family and the Church as inimical to the sovereignty of the individual, it is inimical to Catholicism. But the earlier, historic kind of liberalism is not hostile to such institutions, and indeed draws sustenance from them. (This, of course, was Tocqueville’s argument.) Thus, for the accommodationists, the task ahead for American Catholics seems to be to restore the pristine form of liberalism to American politics.
The radicals regard the 1940s and 50s not as “ordinary time” but as an exceptional and ephemeral truce between Catholicism and American liberalism. They see today’s form of liberalism as the natural or organic outgrowth of classical liberalism, not as an aberration from it. Thus, the antagonism between Catholicism and American liberalism has always been there, even if at times it has been latent. For the radicals, the fundamental flaw in American liberalism has existed since the Founding: liberalism has a false anthropology. It assumes an atomistic conception of the individual, who extricates himself or herself from loneliness and reaches society through a series of bargains. We are not made for society; we construct it. We are not naturally altruistic; we are utterly self-seeking. We are not natively good, nor do we even have natural propensities towards the good. We are incorrigibly evil, but with cleverly devised institutions, we can sometimes produce good effects from evil causes. Political outcomes, like market ones, are guided by an invisible hand, which transubstantiates private vice into public virtue. In essence, the radical Catholics think that American liberalism is founded on a Calvinist, and hence false, conception of human nature. For them, such liberalism both starts and ends in what Burke called “the dust and powder of individuality” which sooner or later is “dispersed to all the winds of heaven.”
There are problems for each side of the Catholic debate. The radicals will have to explain more clearly how the liberalism of the present is continuous with, indeed grows out of, the classical liberalism of the early Republic. They will have to demonstrate the historical and conceptual linkages between the Calvinist and consumerist conceptions of human nature, and how the one eventually developed into the other.
The radicals will also have to explain how the American Catholic Church of the 1950s and 60s achieved such rapport with American society. Ancient, metaphysical, hierarchical, dogmatic, and other-worldly as it was, it nevertheless exerted a powerful influence over a society that was self-consciously modern, pragmatic, tolerant, democratic and secular – an influence far greater than that exercised by the American Church of the present. The Church may have been like a gorgeous if barnacled Spanish galleon, cast ashore by careless waves on some cold New England beach; but however incongruously, it fitted the landscape. Was that “ordinary time,” or is this?
The accommodationists will have to explain why things went wrong and how they can be corrected. Given the stupendous efforts that have been made in the “culture wars” of the past forty years to recapture American culture or even just to hold the line against its further deterioration, they will have to show how, in much less promising circumstances, further efforts will bring tangible improvements.
Unquestionably, this is a serious and important debate – one that calls the ultimate assumptions of the American regime into question. Many of us are shocked and depressed by the current state of America – its hardness of heart to the most vulnerable; its contempt for the poor; its violence abroad and at home; its corrupt sexual morality; its increasing intolerance and persecutory zeal (with ourselves as targets); and so on. But for these debating Catholics, the question is whether the American situation is curable, by some kind of reform program; or incurable, inherently tending to self-destruction.
The parties to the Catholic debate are thinking foundationally – a sure sign that we are in crisis. They are asking: Do we continue to engage the legal and political system? Or do we break off and try to create sheltered communities of our own, like the hidden church under the Roman Empire? What can we learn from the adaptive strategies of other religious minorities (a particularly interesting observation in Dreher’s posting came from an Orthodox Jew)? Is America a disappointing friend, or is it an enemy? If it’s an enemy, how do we deal with it?
Presented here to the public for the first time, the Pinkas of the Metz Beit Din is the official register of civil cases that came before the Metz rabbinic court in the two decades prior to the French Revolution. Brimming with details of commercial transactions, inheritance disputes, women’s roles in economic life, and the interplay between French law and Jewish law, the Metz Pinkas offers remarkable evidence of the engagement of Jews with the surrounding society and culture. The two volumes of Protocols of Justice comprise the complete text of the Metz Pinkas Beit Din, which is fully annotated by the author, and a thorough analysis of its significance for history and law at the threshold of modernity.
Through his painstaking and path-breaking treatment of this incredibly nuanced and rich text, Jay Berkovitz has placed before academics and all other interested readers a heretofore untapped resource of vast importance. His insightful and extensive introductory monograph beautifully sets the stage for scholars in a wide array of fields to mine this material, which will undoubtedly yield significant new results in the history of Jewish and non-Jewish society in eighteenth-century Europe and beyond. Ephraim Kanarfogel, E. Billi Ivry University Professor of Jewish History, Literature and Law, Yeshiva University
This November, I.B. Tauris Publishers will release “Democracy, Human Rights and Law in Islamic Thought” by Mohammed Abed Al-Jabri (Mohammed V University, Morocco). The publisher’s description follows:
Mohammad Abed al-Jabri is one of the most influential political philosophers in the contemporary Middle East. A critical rationalist in the tradition of Avincenna and Averroes, he emphasizes the distinctive political and cultural heritage of the Arab world whilst rejecting the philosophical discourses that have been used to obscure its democratic deficit. This volume introduces an English-language audience for the first time to writings that have had a major impact on Arab political thought. Wide-ranging in scope yet focused in detail, these essays interrogate concepts such as democracy, law, and human rights, looking at how they have been applied in the history of the Arab world, and show that they are determined by political and social context, not by Islamic doctrine. Jabri argues that in order to develop democratic societies in which human rights are respected, the Arab world cannot simply rely on old texts and traditions. Nor can it import democratic models from the West. Instead, he says, a new tradition will have to be forged by today’s Arabs themselves, on their own terms.
Law of Desire explores an institution in which sexuality, morality, religious rules, secular laws, and cultural practices converge. Drawing on rich interviews that would have been denied a Western anthropologist, Haeri describes the concept of a temporary marriage contract as it is practiced in Iran. This revised edition includes a postscript contextualizing this classic work within contemporary Iranian society.
The workplace is a key forum in which the issue of religion and its position in the public sphere is under debate. Desires to observe and express religious beliefs in the workplace can introduce conflict between employees and employers. This book addresses the role the law plays in the resolution of these potential conflicts.
The book considers the definition and underlying motives of religious expression, and explores the different ways it may impact the workplace. Andrew Hambler identifies principled responses to workplace religious expression within a liberal state and compares this to the law applying in England and Wales and its interpretation by courts and tribunals. The book determines the extent to which freedom of religious expression for the individual enjoys legal protection in the workplace in England and Wales, and asks whether there is a case for changing the law to strengthen that protection.
The book will be of great use and interest to scholars and students of religion and the law, employment law, and religion and human rights.
Last month, McGill-Queens University Press released “Multiculturalism and Religious Identity: Canada and India” edited by Sonia Sikka (University of Ottawa) and Lori G. Beaman (University of Ottawa). The publisher’s description follows:
How, and to what extent, can religion be included within commitments to multiculturalism? Multiculturalism and Religious Identity addresses this question by examining the political recognition and management of religious identity in Canada and India.
In multicultural policy, practice, and literature, religion has until recently not been included within broader discussions of multiculturalism, perhaps due to worries of potential for conflict with secularism. This collection undertakes a contemporary analysis of how the Canadian and Indian states each approach religious diversity through social and political policies, as well as how religion and secularism meet both philosophically and politically in contested public space. Although Canada and India have differing political and religious histories – leading to different articulations of multiculturalism, religious diversity, and secularism – both countries share a commitment to ensuring fair treatment for the different religious communities they include.
Combining broader theoretical and normative reflections with close case studies, Multiculturalism and Religious Identity leads the way to addressing these timely issues in the Canadian and Indian contexts.
The growing pace of international migration, technological revolution in media and travel generate circumstances that provide opportunities for the mobility of African new religious movements (ANRMs) within Africa and beyond. ANRMs are furthering their self-assertion and self-insertion into the religious landscapes of Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Their growing presence and public visibility seem to be more robustly captured by the popular media than by scholars of NRMs, historians of religion and social scientists, a tendency that has probably shaped the public mental picture and understanding of the phenomena. This book provides new theoretical and methodological insights for understanding and interpreting ANRMs and African-derived religions in diaspora.
Contributors focus on individual groups and movements drawn from Christian, Islamic, Jewish and African-derived religious movements and explore their provenance and patterns of emergence; their belief systems and ritual practices; their public/civic roles; group self-definition; public perceptions and responses; tendencies towards integration/segregation; organisational networks; gender orientations and the implications of interactions within and between the groups and with the host societies. The book includes contributions from scholars and religious practitioners, thus offering new insights into how ANRMs can be better defined, approached, and interpreted by scholars, policy makers, and media practitioners alike.
This October, Ashgate Publishing will release “Legal Cases, New Religious Movements, and Minority Faiths,” edited by James T. Richardson (University of Nevada) and François Bellanger (University of Geneva, Switzerland). The publisher’s description follows:
New religious movements (NRMs) and other minority faiths have regularly been the focus of legal cases around the world in recent decades. This is the first book to focus on important aspects of the relationship of smaller faiths to the societies in which they function by using specific legal cases to examine social control efforts. The legal cases involve group leaders, a groups’ practices or alleged abuses against members and children in the group, legal actions brought by former members or third parties, attacks against such groups by outsiders including even governments, and libel and slander actions brought by religious groups as they seek to defend themselves. These cases are sometimes milestones in the relation between state authorities and religious groups.
Exploring cases in different parts of the world, and assessing the events causing such cases and their consequences, this book offers a practical insight for understanding the relations of NRMs and other minority religions and the law from the perspective of legal cases. Chapters focus on legal, political, and social implications. Including contributions from scholars, legal practitioners, actual or former members, and authorities involved in such cases from various jurisdictions, this book presents an objective approach to understanding why so many legal actions have involved NRMs and other minority faiths in recent years in western societies, and the consequences of those actions for the society and the religious group as well.
This October, Routledge Press will release “Religion, Nation and Democracy in the South Caucasus” edited by Alexander Agadjanian (Russian State University), Ansgar Jödicke (University of Fribour, Switzerland), and Evert van der Zweerde (Radbout University of Nijmegen, Netherlands). The publisher’s description follows:
This book explores developments in the three major societies of the South Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – focusing especially on religion, historical traditions, national consciousness, and political culture, and on how these factors interact. It outlines how, despite close geographical interlacement, common historical memories and inherited structures, the three countries have deep differences; and it discusses how development in all three nations has differed significantly from the countries’ declared commitments to democratic orientation and European norms and values. The book also considers how external factors and international relations continue to impact on the three countries.
For several decades, culture played a central role in challenging the liberal tradition. More recently however, religion has re-emerged as one of the central challenges facing Western liberal societies’ conception of multiculturalism. Mapping the Legal Boundaries of Belonging explores the complex relationship between religion and multiculturalism and the role of the state and law in the creation of boundaries.
rules, secular laws, and cultural practices converge. Drawing on rich interviews that would have been denied a Western anthropologist, Haeri describes the concept of a temporary marriage contract as it is practiced in Iran. This revised edition includes a postscript contextualizing this classic work within contemporary Iranian society.
multiculturalism? Multiculturalism and Religious Identity addresses this question by examining the political recognition and management of religious identity in Canada and India.
media and travel generate circumstances that provide opportunities for the mobility of African new religious movements (ANRMs) within Africa and beyond. ANRMs are furthering their self-assertion and self-insertion into the religious landscapes of Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Their growing presence and public visibility seem to be more robustly captured by the popular media than by scholars of NRMs, historians of religion and social scientists, a tendency that has probably shaped the public mental picture and understanding of the phenomena. This book provides new theoretical and methodological insights for understanding and interpreting ANRMs and African-derived religions in diaspora.
