Freedom of Religion by Individual Choice

Freedom of Religion by Individual Choice PDF Author: Sarah Carpenter-Vascik
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781949006520
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Lately, we hear more and more about how our Founding Fathers were all Christian, God-fearing men and America is a Christian country. Ministers across the nation proclaim this in sermons and political speeches and politicians continually proclaim it at rallies and events, but is our country really Christian? Was it intended to be? Did the men who founded America and drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights really set out to create a nation by and for Christians, or was our fledgling country meant for people of all faiths and beliefs equally? This book attempts to answer these questions by examining the history and events that surrounded the Founding Fathers, and how this affected them. Only by hearing their own words can we really know what they envisioned as they expressed their ideas and opinions about the impact of religion when it's interwoven in politics and government. This work makes extensive use of letters and documents written by the Founding Fathers to reveal their personally expressed ideas and feelings about religion, ideas and feelings that may surprise you.

Freedom of Religion by Individual Choice

Freedom of Religion by Individual Choice PDF Author: Sarah Carpenter-Vascik
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781949006520
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
Lately, we hear more and more about how our Founding Fathers were all Christian, God-fearing men and America is a Christian country. Ministers across the nation proclaim this in sermons and political speeches and politicians continually proclaim it at rallies and events, but is our country really Christian? Was it intended to be? Did the men who founded America and drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights really set out to create a nation by and for Christians, or was our fledgling country meant for people of all faiths and beliefs equally? This book attempts to answer these questions by examining the history and events that surrounded the Founding Fathers, and how this affected them. Only by hearing their own words can we really know what they envisioned as they expressed their ideas and opinions about the impact of religion when it's interwoven in politics and government. This work makes extensive use of letters and documents written by the Founding Fathers to reveal their personally expressed ideas and feelings about religion, ideas and feelings that may surprise you.

Liberty in the Things of God

Liberty in the Things of God PDF Author: Robert Louis Wilken
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300226632
Category : Freedom of religion
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
From one of the leading historians of Christianity comes this sweeping reassessment of religious freedom, from the church fathers to John Locke In the ancient world Christian apologists wrote in defense of their right to practice their faith in the cities of the Roman Empire. They argued that religious faith is an inward disposition of the mind and heart and cannot be coerced by external force, laying a foundation on which later generations would build. Chronicling the history of the struggle for religious freedom from the early Christian movement through the seventeenth century, Robert Louis Wilken shows that the origins of religious freedom and liberty of conscience are religious, not political, in origin. They took form before the Enlightenment through the labors of men and women of faith who believed there could be no justice in society without liberty in the things of God. This provocative book, drawing on writings from the early Church as well as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reminds us of how "the meditations of the past were fitted to affairs of a later day."

A Summary View of the Rights of British America

A Summary View of the Rights of British America PDF Author: Thomas Jefferson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description


Endowed by Our Creator

Endowed by Our Creator PDF Author: Michael I. Meyerson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300183496
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
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, Meyerson concludes. Now it is for us to determine whether religion will be used to alienate and divide or to inspire and unify our religiously diverse nation.

Persecution & Toleration

Persecution & Toleration PDF Author: Noel D. Johnson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110842502X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
In this book, Noel D. Johnson and Mark Koyama tackle the question: how does religious liberty develop?

Religious Freedom and the Constitution

Religious Freedom and the Constitution PDF Author: Christopher L. Eisgruber
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674034457
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Religion has become a charged token in a politics of division. In disputes about faith-based social services, public money for religious schools, the Pledge of Allegiance, Ten Commandments monuments, the theory of evolution, and many other topics, angry contestation threatens to displace America's historic commitment to religious freedom. Part of the problem, the authors argue, is that constitutional analysis of religious freedom has been hobbled by the idea of "a wall of separation" between church and state. That metaphor has been understood to demand that religion be treated far better than other concerns in some contexts, and far worse in others. Sometimes it seems to insist on both contrary forms of treatment simultaneously. Missing has been concern for the fair and equal treatment of religion. In response, the authors offer an understanding of religious freedom called Equal Liberty. Equal Liberty is guided by two principles. First, no one within the reach of the Constitution ought to be devalued on account of the spiritual foundation of their commitments. Second, all persons should enjoy broad rights of free speech, personal autonomy, associative freedom, and private property. Together, these principles are generous and fair to a wide range of religious beliefs and practices. With Equal Liberty as their guide, the authors offer practical, moderate, and appealing terms for the settlement of many hot-button issues that have plunged religious freedom into controversy. Their book calls Americans back to the project of finding fair terms of cooperation for a religiously diverse people, and it offers a valuable set of tools for working toward that end.

Freedom of Religion and Belief: A World Report

Freedom of Religion and Belief: A World Report PDF Author: Kevin Boyle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113472229X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 509

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Book Description
This report, the first of its kind yet to be published, provides a detailed and impartial account of how the individual's right to hold beliefs is understood, protected or denied throughout the world. Consisting of accessible, short edited entries based on drafts commissioned from experts living in the countries surveyed, it exposes persecution and discrimination in virtually all world regions. The book: * provides an analysis of United Nations standards of freedom of religion and belief * covers over fifty countries, divided into regions and introduced by a regional overview * covers themes including: the relationships between belief groups and the state; freedom to manifest belief in law and practice; religion and schools; religious minorities; new religious movements; the impact of beliefs on the status of women; and the extent to which conscientious objection to military service is recognised by governments * draws on examples of accommodation and co-operation between different religions and beliefs and identifies the main challenges to be overcome if the diversity of human conviction is to be established.

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.

Interpreting the Free Exercise of Religion

Interpreting the Free Exercise of Religion PDF Author: Bette Novit Evans
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807846742
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
A generation ago, all of the big questions concerning religious freedom in America seemed to have been resolved. At the very least, the lines of division between proponents of a wall of separation between church and state and advocates of religious accomm

Religion and the Constitution, Volume 1

Religion and the Constitution, Volume 1 PDF Author: Kent Greenawalt
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400827523
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
Balancing respect for religious conviction and the values of liberal democracy is a daunting challenge for judges and lawmakers, particularly when religious groups seek exemption from laws that govern others. Should members of religious sects be able to use peyote in worship? Should pacifists be forced to take part in military service when there is a draft, and should this depend on whether they are religious? How can the law address the refusal of parents to provide medical care to their children--or the refusal of doctors to perform abortions? Religion and the Constitution presents a new framework for addressing these and other controversial questions that involve competing demands of fairness, liberty, and constitutional validity. In the first of two major volumes on the intersection of constitutional and religious issues in the United States, Kent Greenawalt focuses on one of the Constitution's main clauses concerning religion: the Free Exercise Clause. Beginning with a brief account of the clause's origin and a short history of the Supreme Court's leading decisions about freedom of religion, he devotes a chapter to each of the main controversies encountered by judges and lawmakers. Sensitive to each case's context in judging whether special treatment of religious claims is justified, Greenawalt argues that the state's treatment of religion cannot be reduced to a single formula. Calling throughout for religion to be taken more seriously as a force for meaning in people's lives, Religion and the Constitution aims to accommodate the maximum expression of religious conviction that is consistent with a commitment to fairness and the public welfare.