Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age

Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age PDF Author: Nelson Tebbe
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674971434
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Tensions between religious freedom and equality law are newly strained in America. As lawmakers work to protect LGBT citizens and women seeking reproductive freedom, religious traditionalists assert their right to dissent from what they see as a new liberal orthodoxy. Some religious advocates are going further and expressing skepticism that egalitarianism can be defended with reasons at all. Legal experts have not offered a satisfying response—until now. Nelson Tebbe argues that these disputes, which are admittedly complex, nevertheless can be resolved without irrationality or arbitrariness. In Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age, he advances a method called social coherence, based on the way that people reason through moral problems in everyday life. Social coherence provides a way to reach justified conclusions in constitutional law, even in situations that pit multiple values against each other. Tebbe contends that reasons must play a role in the resolution of these conflicts, alongside interests and ideologies. Otherwise, the health of democratic constitutionalism could suffer. Applying this method to a range of real-world cases, Tebbe offers a set of powerful principles for mediating between religion and equality law, and he shows how they can lead to workable solutions in areas ranging from employment discrimination and public accommodations to government officials and public funding. While social coherence does not guarantee outcomes that will please the liberal Left, it does point the way toward reasoned, nonarbitrary solutions to the current impasse.

Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age

Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age PDF Author: Nelson Tebbe
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674971434
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
Tensions between religious freedom and equality law are newly strained in America. As lawmakers work to protect LGBT citizens and women seeking reproductive freedom, religious traditionalists assert their right to dissent from what they see as a new liberal orthodoxy. Some religious advocates are going further and expressing skepticism that egalitarianism can be defended with reasons at all. Legal experts have not offered a satisfying response—until now. Nelson Tebbe argues that these disputes, which are admittedly complex, nevertheless can be resolved without irrationality or arbitrariness. In Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age, he advances a method called social coherence, based on the way that people reason through moral problems in everyday life. Social coherence provides a way to reach justified conclusions in constitutional law, even in situations that pit multiple values against each other. Tebbe contends that reasons must play a role in the resolution of these conflicts, alongside interests and ideologies. Otherwise, the health of democratic constitutionalism could suffer. Applying this method to a range of real-world cases, Tebbe offers a set of powerful principles for mediating between religion and equality law, and he shows how they can lead to workable solutions in areas ranging from employment discrimination and public accommodations to government officials and public funding. While social coherence does not guarantee outcomes that will please the liberal Left, it does point the way toward reasoned, nonarbitrary solutions to the current impasse.

Religious Freedom and the Law

Religious Freedom and the Law PDF Author: Brett G. Scharffs
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351369717
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
This volume presents a timely analysis of some of the current controversies relating to freedom for religion and freedom from religion that have dominated headlines worldwide. The collection trains the lens closely on select issues and contexts to provide detailed snapshots of the ways in which freedom for and from religion are conceptualized, protected, neglected, and negotiated in diverse situations and locations. A broad range of issues including migration, education, the public space, prisons and healthcare are discussed drawing examples from Europe, the US, Asia, Africa and South America. Including contributions from leading experts in the field, the book will be essential reading for researchers and policy-makers interested in Law and Religion.

Religious Freedom: Social-Scientific Approaches

Religious Freedom: Social-Scientific Approaches PDF Author: Olga Breskaya
Publisher: Annual Review of the Sociology
ISBN: 9789004468030
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
"This volume offers original research on religious freedom from around the globe. Individual chapters address the issues related to defining and understanding the concept of religious freedom and incorporate sociological thinking into interdisciplinary analysis of this topic. By interpreting legal cases, analyzing cross-national data, interviewing policy-makers, and reviewing policy-papers concerning religious freedom, the authors highlight the necessity of sociology engaging with other disciplines in this type of research. By applying theories of religious pluralism, secularity, secularization, judicialization of religion, "lived religion", total institutions, and others, this volume contributes theoretical perspectives, sociological concepts and empirical analyses that highlight the development of religious freedom as an area of study in the social sciences. Contributors are: Zaheeda P. Alibhai, Chrysa Almpani, Olga Breskaya, Anindita Chakrabarti, Lukáš Dirga, Roger Finke, Giuseppe Giordan, Kerby Goff, Anna Grasso, Nuran E. Işık, Dane R. Mataic, Efe Peker, Alexandros Sakellariou, Guillaume Silhol, Jan Váně, Barbara R. Walters"--

The Impossibility of Religious Freedom

The Impossibility of Religious Freedom PDF Author: Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691180954
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
The Constitution may guarantee it. But religious freedom in America is, in fact, impossible. So argues this timely and iconoclastic work by law and religion scholar Winnifred Sullivan. Sullivan uses as the backdrop for the book the trial of Warner vs. Boca Raton, a recent case concerning the laws that protect the free exercise of religion in America. The trial, for which the author served as an expert witness, concerned regulations banning certain memorials from a multiconfessional nondenominational cemetery in Boca Raton, Florida. The book portrays the unsuccessful struggle of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish families in Boca Raton to preserve the practice of placing such religious artifacts as crosses and stars of David on the graves of the city-owned burial ground. Sullivan demonstrates how, during the course of the proceeding, citizens from all walks of life and religious backgrounds were harassed to define just what their religion is. She argues that their plight points up a shocking truth: religion cannot be coherently defined for the purposes of American law, because everyone has different definitions of what religion is. Indeed, while religious freedom as a political idea was arguably once a force for tolerance, it has now become a force for intolerance, she maintains. A clear-eyed look at the laws created to protect religious freedom, this vigorously argued book offers a new take on a right deemed by many to be necessary for a free democratic society. It will have broad appeal not only for religion scholars, but also for anyone interested in law and the Constitution. Featuring a new preface by the author, The Impossibility of Religious Freedom offers a new take on a right deemed by many to be necessary for a free democratic society.

Religion and Prison: An Overview of Contemporary Europe

Religion and Prison: An Overview of Contemporary Europe PDF Author: Julia Martínez-Ariño
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030368343
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
This volume offers a European overview of the management of religious diversity in prisons and provides readers with rich empirical material and a comparative perspective. The chapters combine both legal and sociological approaches. Coverage for each country includes historical background, current penitentiary organization, and recent changes or trends. In their exploration of legal aspects, the contributors look at such factors as the status of prison chaplains and regulations concerning religious practice and religious freedom. These include meals, prayers, and visits. The sociological analysis examines religious discrimination in prison, church-prison relations, conversion and proselytism, and more. The European coverage includes countries for which such information is seldom available. The book offers readers a better understanding of governance of religion in prisons. This text appeals to students, researchers and professionals in the field.

The Myth of American Religious Freedom

The Myth of American Religious Freedom PDF Author: David Sehat
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199793115
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
In the battles over religion and politics in America, both liberals and conservatives often appeal to history. Liberals claim that the Founders separated church and state. But for much of American history, David Sehat writes, Protestant Christianity was intimately intertwined with the state. Yet the past was not the Christian utopia that conservatives imagine either. Instead, a Protestant moral establishment prevailed, using government power to punish free thinkers and religious dissidents. In The Myth of American Religious Freedom, Sehat provides an eye-opening history of religion in public life, overturning our most cherished myths. Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government, which had limited authority. The Protestant moral establishment ruled on the state level. Using moral laws to uphold religious power, religious partisans enforced a moral and religious orthodoxy against Catholics, Jews, Mormons, agnostics, and others. Not until 1940 did the U.S. Supreme Court extend the First Amendment to the states. As the Supreme Court began to dismantle the connections between religion and government, Sehat argues, religious conservatives mobilized to maintain their power and began the culture wars of the last fifty years. To trace the rise and fall of this Protestant establishment, Sehat focuses on a series of dissenters--abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, socialist Eugene V. Debs, and many others. Shattering myths held by both the left and right, David Sehat forces us to rethink some of our most deeply held beliefs. By showing the bad history used on both sides, he denies partisans a safe refuge with the Founders.

The Right to Religious Freedom in International Law

The Right to Religious Freedom in International Law PDF Author: Anat Scolnicov
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113690705X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
This book analyses the right to religious freedom in international law, drawing on an array of national and international cases. Taking a rigorous approach to the right to religious freedom, Anat Scolnicov argues that the interpretation and application of religious freedom must be understood as a conflict between individual and group claims of rights, and that although some states, based on their respective histories, religions, and cultures, protect the group over the individual, only an individualistic approach of international law is a coherent way of protecting religious freedom. Analysing legal structures in a variety of both Western and Non-Western jurisdictions, the book sets out a topography of different constitutional structures of religions within states and evaluates their compliance with international human rights law. The book also considers the position of women's religious freedom vis-à-vis community claims of religious freedom, of children’s right to religious freedom and of the rights of dissenters within religious groups.

Defend the Sacred

Defend the Sacred PDF Author: Michael D. McNally
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691190909
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
"In 2016, thousands of people travelled to North Dakota to camp out near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to protest the construction of an oil pipeline that is projected to cross underneath the Missouri River a half mile upstream from the Reservation. The Standing Rock Sioux consider the pipeline a threat to the region's clean water and to the Sioux's sacred sites (such as its ancient burial grounds). The encamped protests garnered front-page headlines and international attention, and the resolve of the protesters was made clear in a red banner that flew above the camp: "Defend the Sacred". What does it mean when Native communities and their allies make such claims? What is the history of such claim-making, and why has this rhetorical and legal strategy - based on appeals to religious freedom - failed to gain much traction in American courts? As Michael McNally recounts in this book, Native Americans have repeatedly been inspired to assert claims to sacred places, practices, objects, knowledge, and ancestral remains by appealing to the discourse of religious freedom. But such claims based on alleged violations of the First Amendment "free exercise of religion" clause of the US Constitution have met with little success in US courts, largely because Native American communal traditions have been difficult to capture by the modern Western category of "religion." In light of this poor track record Native communities have gone beyond religious freedom-based legal strategies in articulating their sacred claims: in (e.g.) the technocratic language of "cultural resource" under American environmental and historic preservation law; in terms of the limited sovereignty accorded to Native tribes under federal Indian law; and (increasingly) in the political language of "indigenous rights" according to international human rights law (especially in light of the 2007 U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). And yet the language of religious freedom, which resonates powerfully in the US, continues to be deployed, propelling some remarkably useful legislative and administrative accommodations such as the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act. As McNally's book shows, native communities draw on the continued rhetorical power of religious freedom language to attain legislative and regulatory victories beyond the First Amendment"--

A Sociology of Religious Freedom

A Sociology of Religious Freedom PDF Author: Olga Breskaya
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197533817
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
In recent years, the relevance of religious freedom has spread well beyond academia, becoming a reference point for international relations, multi-level policy development, as well as interfaith negotiations. Meanwhile, scholarship on religious freedom has flourished on the boundaries of sociology, law, comparative politics, history, and theology. This book presents a systematic sociological analysis of religious freedom, bringing together classical sociological theories and empirical perspectives developed during the last three decades. It addresses three major questions involved in any sociology of religious freedom. First: considering its complex and controversial nature, how can religious freedom be defined? Second: what are the recurrent sociological conditions and relevant social perceptions that will foster an understanding of religious freedom in varying political, legal, and socioreligious contexts? And third, what are the mechanisms of social implementation of religious freedom that contribute to making it a fundamental value in a society? Olga Breskaya, Giuseppe Giordan, and James T. Richardson suggest that a sociological definition of religious freedom requires us to take into account historical, philosophical, legal, religious, and political considerations of a given society-and that the social dimensions of religious freedom are as important as the legal ones.

Politics of Religious Freedom

Politics of Religious Freedom PDF Author: Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022624850X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Religious freedom has achieved broad consensus as a condition for peace. Faced with reports of a rise in religious violence and a host of other social ills, public, and private actors have responded with laws and policies designed to promote freedom of religion. But what precisely is being promoted? What are the assumptions underlying this response? The contributions to this volume unsettle the assumption that religious freedom is a singular achievement and that the problem lies in its incomplete accomplishment. Delineating the different conceptions of religious freedom predominant in the world today, as well as their histories and political contexts, the contributions make clear that the reasons for violence and discrimination are more complex than is widely acknowledged. The promotion of a single legal and cultural tool meant to address conflict across a wide variety of cultures can have the perverse effect of exacerbating the problems that plague the communities often cited as falling short. -- from back cover.