Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Barnett & Stein (eds.), “Sacred Aid: Faith and Humanitarianism”

Here’s an interesting collection of essays about the increasing religious inspiration and commitment of contemporary human rights organizations, Sacred Aid: Faith and Humanitarianism (OUP 2012), edited by Michael Barnett (GW) and Janice Gross Stein (Toronto).  The publisher’s description follows.

The global humanitarian movement, which originated within Western religious organizations in the early nineteenth century, has been one of the most important forces in world politics in advancing both human rights and human welfare. While the religious groups that founded the movement originally focused on conversion, in time more secular concerns came to dominate. By the end of the nineteenth century, increasingly professionalized yet nominally religious organization shifted from reliance on the good book to the public health manual. Over the course of the twentieth century, the secularization of humanitarianism only increased, and by the 1970s the movement’s religious inspiration, generally speaking, was marginal to its agenda. However, beginning in the 1980s, religiously inspired humanitarian movements experienced a major revival, and today they are virtual equals of their secular brethren.

From church-sponsored AIDS prevention campaigns in Africa to Muslim charity efforts in flood-stricken Pakistan to Hindu charities in India, religious groups have altered the character of the global humanitarian movement. Moreover, even secular groups now gesture toward religious inspiration in their work. Clearly, the broad, inexorable march toward secularism predicted by so many Westerners has halted, which is especially intriguing with regard to humanitarianism. Not only was it a highly secularized movement just forty years ago, but its principles were based on those we associate with “rational” modernity: cosmopolitan one-worldism and material (as opposed to spiritual) progress. How and why did this happen, and what does it mean for humanitarianism writ large? That is the question that the eminent scholars Michael Barnett and Janice Stein pose in Sacred Aid, and for answers they have gathered chapters from leading scholars that focus on the relationship between secularism and religion in contemporary humanitarianism throughout the developing world. Collectively, the chapters in this volume comprise an original and authoritative account of religion has reshaped the global humanitarian movement in recent times.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Kuru & Stepan, “Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey”

From Columbia University Press, a new collection of essays on law and religion in Turkey, Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey, edited by Ahmet Kuru (San Diego State) and Alfred Stepan (Columbia). The publisher’s description follows.

While Turkey has grown as a world power, promoting the image of a progressive and stable nation, several choices in policy have strained its relationship with the East and the West. Providing historical, social, and religious context for this behavior, the essays in Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey examine issues relevant to Turkish debates and global concerns, from the state’s position on religion to its involvement with the European Union.

Written by experts in a range of disciplines, the chapters explore the toleration of diversity during the Ottoman Empire’s classical period; the erosion of ethno-religious heterogeneity in modern, pre-democratic times; Kemalism and its role in modernization and nation building; the changing political strategies of the military; and the effect of possible EU membership on domestic reforms. The essays also offer a cross-Continental comparison of “multiple secularisms,” as well as political parties, considering especially Turkey’s Justice and Development Party in relation to Europe’s Christian Democratic parties. Contributors tackle critical research questions, such as the legacy of the Ottoman Empire’s ethno-religious plurality and the way in which Turkey’s assertive secularism can be softened to allow greater space for religious actors. They address the military’s “guardian” role in Turkey’s secularism, the implications of recent constitutional amendments for democratization, and the consequences and benefits of Islamic activism’s presence within a democratic system. No other collection confronts Turkey’s contemporary evolution so vividly and thoroughly or offers such expert analysis of its crucial social and political systems.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Conference: The Changing Faces of Religion and Secularity

A quick announcement for a wonderful looking conference to be held at Harvard Law School on June 7-8, The Changing Faces of Religion and Secularity, organized by the Universidad de Navarra in Spain.  The program is international in scope and includes some terrific speakers — Mary Ann Glendon, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Russell Hittinger, among many others.  CLR Director Mark Movsesian will be presenting his paper, Crosses and Culture: State-Sponsored Religious Displays in the United States and Europe.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Hammill, “The Mosaic Constitution”

Here is a very interesting contribution to intellectual, literary, and political history, The Mosaic Constitution: Political Theology and Imagination from Machiavelli to Milton (U. Chicago Press 2012), by Graham Hammill (SUNY Buffalo).  The publisher’s description follows.

It is a common belief that scripture has no place in modern, secular politics. Graham Hammill challenges this notion in The Mosaic Constitution, arguing that Moses’s constitution of Israel, which created people bound by the rule of law, was central to early modern writings about government and state.

Hammill shows how political writers from Machiavelli to Spinoza drew on Mosaic narrative to imagine constitutional forms of government. At the same time, literary writers like Christopher Marlowe, Michael Drayton, and John Milton turned to Hebrew scripture to probe such fundamental divisions as those between populace and multitude, citizenship and race, and obedience and individual choice. As these writers used biblical narrative to fuse politics with the creative resources of language, Mosaic narrative also gave them a means for exploring divine authority as a product of literary imagination. The first book to place Hebrew scripture at the cutting edge of seventeenth-century literary and political innovation, The Mosaic Constitution offers a fresh perspective on political theology and the relations between literary representation and the founding of political communities.
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 Marc O. DeGirolami

Kupchan, “No One’s World”

Perhaps somewhat peripherally related to religion proper, but No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn (OUP 2012), by Charles A. Kupchan (Georgetown) looks to contain much of interest for folks who think about law and religion.  The publisher’s description follows.

The world is on the cusp of a global turn. Between 1500 and 1800, the West sprinted ahead of other centers of power in Asia and the Middle East. Europe and the United States have dominated the world since. But today the West’s preeminence is slipping away as China, India, Brazil and other emerging powers rise. Although most strategists recognize that the dominance of the West is on the wane, they are confident that its founding ideas–democracy, capitalism, and secular nationalism–will continue to spread, ensuring that the Western order will outlast its primacy.

In No One’s World, Charles A. Kupchan boldly challenges this view, arguing that the world is headed for political and ideological diversity; emerging powers will neither defer to the West’s lead nor converge toward the Western way. The ascent of the West was the product of social and economic conditions unique to Europe and the United States. As other regions now rise, they are following their own paths to modernity and embracing their own conceptions of domestic and international order.

Kupchan contends that the Western order will not be displaced by a new great power or dominant political model. The twenty-first century will not belong to America, China, Asia, or anyone else. It will be no one’s world. For the first time in history, the world will be interdependent–but without a center of gravity or global guardian.

More than simply diagnosing what lies ahead, Kupchan provides a detailed strategy for striking a bargain between the West and the rising rest by fashioning a new consensus on issues of legitimacy, sovereignty, and governance. Thoughtful, provocative, sweeping in scope, this work is nothing less than a global guidebook for the 21st century.  

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Tourkochoriti on Freedom of Religion in France and the USA

Ioanna Tourkochoriti (Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, Harvard University) has posted The Burka Ban: Divergent Approaches to Freedom of Religion in France and in the USA. The abstract follows.

Six years after prohibiting the wearing of headscarves by students in public schools, the French state passed a law prohibiting the wearing of burkas in public places. Compared to France, in the United States there is more tolerance for wearing signs of religious affiliation. The difference in legal responses can be understood in reference to a different background understanding of the fundamental presuppositions of republicanism in the two legal and political orders, which also define their conception of secularism. The law enacted in France can be understood in a general frame of a paternalistic state, which is seen as permitted to dictate the proper exercise of their reason to the citizens. In the United States, the dominant understanding of republicanism attempts to reconcile the natural rights philosophy with the conception of the common good. The trust in the use of collective power and the legislature dominant in France can be opposed to the distrust towards the same elements in the United States.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Call for Papers: The Changing Faces of Religion and Secularity

The Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Navarra (Spain) has posted a call for papers for a conference this summer on “The Changing Faces of Religion and Secularity.” Details are here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Lobby Day and Rally for Reason

Lots of religion-related politicking this weekend. In addition to the Stand Up Coalition‘s Rally for Religious Freedom, today, a group called the Secular Coalition for America (“Representing Secular Americans in Our Nation’s Capital”) will hold a “Lobby Day for Reason.” Lobby Day is designed “to allow atheists, agnostics, humanists, and secular Americans to directly lobby their members of Congress on the issues that matter to us.” I imagine one of those issues is the unfortunate tendency of religious organizations to lobby members of Congress. Tomorrow, the group will host a day-long “Reason Rally” on the National Mall, featuring Richard Dawkins and Jessica Ahlquist, the Rhode Island high school student who appeared as plaintiff in this case.

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Prélot on France’s Full Veil Prohibition

Pierre-Henri Prélot (University of Cergy-Pontoise) has posted Religious Symbols and the Law of 1905: Reflections on the Prohibition of the Full Veil in Light of the French Law on Religious Practice. The abstract follows.

There is a recurrent debate in France on the conflict between the principle of secularism and the expression of religious convictions in public places. The liberal approach, which is open to all forms of public expression including the religious convictions of individuals, is opposed to a much more restrictive conception, which understands secularism as limiting religious convictions to the private sphere, with the corollary of the interdiction, or at least a strict restriction, of their public manifestation, whether they be individual or collective. In today’s highly secularized French society, which feels itself undermined by religious factors deriving from international conflicts and internal tensions, the sometimes radical affirmation of identities tends to weaken the liberal interpretation which is at the basis of the law of 1905, in favor of a much more restrictive vision of the principle of secularism. That is revealed by the law of October 11, 2010, on the prohibition of the covering of the face in public places, which falls within the very old royal tradition, derived from Gallicanism, of the public regulation of religious practices. Although it carefully avoids any reference to religious practices or convictions, the law of October 11, 2010 must be understood as a law implementing a religious policy.

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