Posted on by roncolombo · 1 Comment

Cristiada / For Greater Glory – Impressions

As promised, I’m reporting back with my impressions of “For Greater Glory,” a film depicting the Mexican Cristeros War of 1926-29, which opened this past weekend.

The film is not an American production – and its director makes his debut with it.  I fear that this shows.  Despite some genuine stars (Andy Garcia, Peter O’Toole, Eva Longoria), and beautiful visuals, the film lacks a certain polish.  It is at times too fast and choppy, and at times too slow and drawn out.  That said, the film has its moments – there are several excellent scenes.  And overall, it is certainly watchable.

And given its subject matter and content, I suggest that it is certainly worth watching.

The Cristeros War was sparked by widespread popular resistance to Read more

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Paulsen on Religious Liberty and the Existence of God

Michael Stokes Paulsen (University of St. Thomas School of Law) has posted The Priority of God (A Theory of Religious Liberty). The abstract follows.

Professor Paulsen argues that religious freedom only makes entire sense as a constitutional arrangement on the premise that God exists, that God makes actual demands on human loyalty and conduct, and that those demands precede and are superior in obligation to those of the State. Religious freedom exists to protect the exercise of plausibly true understandings of God’s actual commands, as against state power, and to disable state power to proscribe — or prescribe — religious exercise. The article explores four possible stances of society toward religious freedom, depending on whether society and state embrace the idea of religious truth (or not) and whether society and state embrace the idea of religious tolerance (or not). It then argues that America’s Constitution’s religion clauses, in their original conception, are predicated in a belief in the possibility of religious truth and the imperative of religious tolerance so that the state does not interfere with private individuals’ and groups’ pursuit of truth. This perspective illuminates many of the issues that have plagued interpretation of the First Amendment religion clauses.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Conference on Illegal Covering (Onanti, Spain)

The International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Onanti, Spain will hold a conference, “‘Illegal’  Covering: Comparative Perspectives on Legal and Social Discourses on Religious Diversity,” this Thursday and Friday, May 17-18. The conference organizers are Valerie Amiraux (University of Montreal) and Pascale Fournier (University of Ottawa). For details, follow the links here.

Posted on by Michael Helfand

Litigating Religion Redux

I’ve been editing the latest draft of my forthcoming article “Litigating Religion” in anticipation of presenting the piece at this year’s Stanford/Yale/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum (I’ve also been pleased to have the piece discussed previously on the CLR Forum here and here).  The primary thesis of the article is that the Establishment Clause should not be interpreted to prohibit courts from adjudicating religious questions; instead, it should be interpreted to prohibit courts from adjudicating claims properly within the province of religious institutions.  Put differently, courts should resolve religious disputes where no other religious institution is capable of doing so.

One section of the article is dedicated to discussing court cases that raise religious questions, but where there is no religious institution that has an interest and the authority to resolve the dispute.  Given that I’m always looking for more examples, I was particularly pleased to see a post from Eugene Volokh about a 2007 case (only recently posted on Westlaw) that fits the bill where a court refused to enforce an arbitration provision that called for the appointment of “Three Orthodox Rabbis” as arbitrators.    The court refused to enforce the provision on the grounds that “[t]he Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits a civil court from resolving issues concerning religious doctrine and practice.”  Thus determining whether an arbitrator is Orthodox – so as to satisfy the arbitration agreement – would run afoul of the First Amendment.   Instead, the court severed this provision from the arbitration agreement and authorized each party to select an arbitrator and have those two arbitrators select a third.  As the court noted, “[a]lthough the provision requiring orthodox arbitrators is unenforceable, the parties are free to select arbitrators, who in their own judgment, meet the religious requirement.”

But is this the preferred outcome?

Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Clark, “Abraham’s Children”

The s0-called Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all claim to be the People of God. In fact, each claims to be the  People of God, to the exclusion of the others. One possible implication is that rival claimants are imposters who must be punished, and at times each Abrahamic religion has behaved very intolerantly towards adherents of the other faiths. That is not the only possible implication, however. Rather than anticipate the Last Judgment, one might leave punishment to God and show charity to the members of the other covenants, and at times each Abrahamic religion has been tolerant of its rivals. A new book by Calvin College Professor Kelly James Clark, Abraham’s Children: Liberty and Tolerance in an Age of Religious Conflict (Yale 2012), emphasizes this second, more hopeful response. The publisher’s description follows:

Scarcely any country in today’s world can claim to be free of intolerance. Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, Sudan, the Balkans, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and the Caucasus are just some of the areas of intractable conflict apparently inspired or exacerbated by religious differences. Can devoted Jews, Christians, or Muslims remain true to their own fundamental beliefs and practices, yet also find paths toward liberty, tolerance, and respect for those of other faiths?

In this vitally important book, fifteen influential practitioners of the Abrahamic religions address religious liberty and tolerance from the perspectives of their own faith traditions. Former president Jimmy Carter, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Indonesia’s first democratically elected president, Abdurrahman Wahid, and the other writers draw on their personal experiences and on the sacred writings that are central in their own religious lives. Rather than relying on “pure reason,” as secularists might prefer, the contributors celebrate religious traditions and find within them a way toward mutual peace, uncompromised liberty, and principled tolerance. Offering a counterbalance to incendiary religious leaders who cite Holy Writ to justify intolerance and violence, the contributors reveal how tolerance and respect for believers in other faiths stand at the core of the Abrahamic traditions.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Ghent University to Host Conference on the Burqa

On May 9, Ghent University (Belgium) will host an international conference highlighting empirical work on the wearing of the face veil, or burqa. Speakers will address not only the sociology of the burqa, but also the possible consequences of laws, like those in Belgium and France, that ban it. A description of the conference agenda is here. H/T: Strasbourg Observers.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Commonweal on the Bishops’ Religious Freedom Statement

Over the past week, I’ve written about criticism from the Catholic right of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ recent statement on religious freedom. Of course, there’s also been criticism from the Catholic left. This week, Commonweal has a negative editorial about the bishops’ statement. More in sorrow than in anger, Commonweal maintains that the statement veers into political partisanship. The  bishops’ simplistic, one-sided language, the editorial complains, makes them sound more like Republican party operatives than pastors. Young people already are turning away from organized religion because it seems too political and conservative on social issues. Surely the bishops do not want to exacerbate that trend?

I wonder about this criticism. It’s true that the bishops’ statement highlights the Obama Administration’s contraceptives mandate. The mandate is the first on the list of threats to religious freedom the bishops identify, and surely served as the prime motivation for their statement. But the second item on the list is state anti-immigration laws, like the recent Alabama measure forbidding assistance to undocumented immigrants. In criticizing these laws, the bishops are hardly mouthing GOP talking points. Republican politicians often favor such measures, while the Obama Administration has filed a lawsuit challenging the Alabama law.

Even with respect to the contraceptives mandate, the bishops could be forgiven for saying that they didn’t start this fight. The bishops surely knew that objecting to the HHS mandate would have the effect of highlighting the Church’s position on contraception, and that this position is unpopular, particularly with Millennials. But what choice was there? It was the Obama Administration that issued the mandate during an election year. For that matter, it was the Obama Administration that argued this Term in Hosanna-Tabor that the religion clauses did not even apply to a church’s decision to fire a minister, a position that a unanimous Court characterized as “remarkable.” If it’s inappropriately partisan for religious organizations to respond when government takes steps like these, then religious organizations can never defend themselves in public debate. That may be a good thing from a spiritual point of view, but I don’t think it’s a result Commonweal would approve.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

More on the SSPX, the Vatican, and Religious Freedom

A couple of days ago, I noted the negative response of the Society of Saint Pius X, a traditionalist Catholic body, to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ recent statement on the importance of religious freedom. The SSPX criticized the American concept of religious freedom, which the Conference had endorsed, as a more or less Protestant idea inconsistent with traditional Church teaching. I guessed that the SSPX represented a rather small movement within Catholicism, but thought it interesting that the bishops’ stance on religion in public life could draw criticism from the right as well as the left.

It turns out I may have underestimated the importance of the SSPX.  (A lesson: outsiders really should not assume they understand relations at the Holy See). La Stampa reports this week that the Vatican and the SSPX are poised to sign an agreement to make the SSPX a personal prelature of the Pope, like Opus Dei. This is big news. Pope John Paul II excommunicated the founder of the SSPX, the French Cardinal Marcel Lefebvre, for disobedience, but Pope Benedict has been working hard to bring the group back into the fold. One major sticking point has been the issue of religious freedom. The SSPX believes that Vatican II’s famous endorsement of religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, contradicts  earlier papal statements, most importantly the 19th Century “Syllabus of Errors,” which famously condemned the idea that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.”

What does this week’s apparent agreement suggest about the Church’s position on religious freedom? According to La Stampa, although the agreement requires SSPX to submit to the Pope on important doctrinal matters, it specifically allows for “legitimate discussion, study and theological explanation of particular expressions or formulations found in the documents of the Second Vatican Council.” Given the SSPX’s long, and apparently continuing, discomfort with Dignitatis Humanae, this language might mean that the concept of religious freedom, at least as understood in at Vatican II, is once again up for debate within the Church. That’s what the La Stampa article suggests. But, as I say, outsiders really should not assume they understand relations at the Holy See.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

Outflanking the Bishops Conference on the Right

Last week, we noted  a report from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on the importance of religious freedom in America, Our First, Most Cherished Liberty: A Statement on Religious Liberty. Most of the time, one hears about dissents from the Catholic Left, which disagrees with the bishops on issues like abortion and homosexuality. Last week, though, there was a reminder that dissenters also exist on the Catholic Right.

The Society for Saint Pius X is a traditionalist Catholic body, formed around opposition to Vatican II, with an ambiguous relationship to the Church. Pope John Paul II excommunicated the society’s founder, and the society lacks canonical status, but recently the Vatican and the SSPX have been negotiating a formalization of the society’s place within the Church. It’s noteworthy, therefore, that the SSPX has responded to Our First, Most Cherished Liberty with a statement of its own. The SSPX is not impressed. In fact, it views the bishops’ statement as another example of an Americanist compromise that dilutes the Catholic faith. “Liberty,” the society asserts, is a matter of freely following the will of God, as that will is expressed in the Catholic Church; it has nothing to do with the American notion — strongly influenced, the SSPX argues, by heretical Calvinist theology — of personal freedom. It is precisely this American idea of personal freedom, the society maintains, that has led to things like the HHS contraceptives mandate. The SSPX calls on the bishops to abandon the principles of the Church’s “opponents” and return to the Church’s own.

As Rick Garnett points out over at Mirror of Justice, this argument was settled at Vatican II itself, in the Church’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae. I don’t know how large a movement the SSPX represents within Catholicism, though I suspect it’s fairly small. Still, it’s interesting to think of the bishops as reflecting a middle-of-the-road position — within the Catholic Church, that is.

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Meyerson, “Endowed by Our Creator: The Birth of Religious Freedom in America”

Endowed by Our Creator: The Birth of Religious Freedom in AmericaAt the end of the month, Yale University Press will publish Endowed by Our Creator: The Birth of Religious Freedom in America (Yale April 2012) by Michael I. Meyerson (U. of Baltimore School of Law). The publisher’s description follows.

The debate over the framers’ concept of freedom of religion has become heated and divisive. This scrupulously researched book sets aside the half-truths, omissions, and partisan arguments, and instead focuses on the actual writings and actions of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and others. Legal scholar Michael I. Meyerson investigates how the framers of the Constitution envisioned religious freedom and how they intended it to operate in the new republic.

Endowed by Our Creator shows that the framers understood that the American government should not acknowledge religion in a way that favors any particular creed or denomination. Nevertheless, the framers believed that religion could instill virtue and help to unify a diverse nation. They created a spiritual public vocabulary, one that could communicate to all—including agnostics and atheists—that they were valued members of the political community. Through their writings and their decisions, the framers affirmed that respect for religious differences is a fundamental American value. Now it is for us, Meyerson concludes, to determine whether religion will be used to alienate and divide or to inspire and unify our religiously diverse nation.