Witnessing Their Faith

Witnessing Their Faith PDF Author: Jay Sekulow
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0742550648
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
When it was ratified in 1791, the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States sought to protect against two distinct types of government actions that interfere with religious liberty: the establishment of a national religion and interference with individual rights to practice religion. Since that time, no question has so bedeviled the U.S. Supreme Court as finding the best way to interpret and apply the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. In this unique and timely book, Jay Sekulow examines not only the key cases and their historical context that have shaped the law concerning church-state relations, but also, for the first time, the impact of the religious faith and practices of Supreme Court Justices who have ruled in each case. Covering cases from the teaching of religion in public schools and the use of federal funds for parochial schools to today's debates about the Pledge of Allegiance and public displays of the Ten Commandments, Witnessing Their Faith is essential reading for anyone interested in the history and future of religious freedom in America.

Witnessing Their Faith

Witnessing Their Faith PDF Author: Jay Sekulow
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0742550648
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
When it was ratified in 1791, the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States sought to protect against two distinct types of government actions that interfere with religious liberty: the establishment of a national religion and interference with individual rights to practice religion. Since that time, no question has so bedeviled the U.S. Supreme Court as finding the best way to interpret and apply the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. In this unique and timely book, Jay Sekulow examines not only the key cases and their historical context that have shaped the law concerning church-state relations, but also, for the first time, the impact of the religious faith and practices of Supreme Court Justices who have ruled in each case. Covering cases from the teaching of religion in public schools and the use of federal funds for parochial schools to today's debates about the Pledge of Allegiance and public displays of the Ten Commandments, Witnessing Their Faith is essential reading for anyone interested in the history and future of religious freedom in America.

The Justices Find Religion

The Justices Find Religion PDF Author: Nantiya Ruan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 43

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Book Description
Religion matters to people. It matters a great deal to religious believers who wish to be free from discrimination and who believe the law should protect them from harassment and allow for accommodation of their religious requirements. It matters to those who do not ascribe to any religion because they want to be assured that religion is not encroaching on their rights and wish to remain free from harassing believers. This tension plays out most forcefully in two places in American society: the public sphere (e.g., public property and public schools) and the workplace. The public sphere is the forum where communities gather and express certain (often majority but also sometimes controversial) viewpoints. Yet the workplace is where most people spend most of their waking time, and therefore bump up against others of different views most frequently. There is reason to believe that the Supreme Court, with its recent personnel changes, will be supportive of more accommodation for religious expression in the workplace. If the Justices expanding public religious expression (such as Ten Commandments displays on public property) are to be consistent, they must revive the largely dormant religious accommodation clause of Title VII. The current statutory rule, that employers need undertake only de minimis accommodations of employee religion, flies in the face of the Court's recent pronunciation, in expanding religious expression under the Establishment Clause, that morality [is] essential to the well-being of society and that encouragement of religion [is] the best way to foster morality.This article urges greater judicial recognition of workplace religious expression rights as the only result both consistent with the Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence and consistent with the legislative intent of statutory religious accommodation provisions. Respectful religious pluralism in the workplace should become the norm, through judicial requirements of best practices in the workplace. Such a view should be wholly supported by the current Court because it is consistent with the Establishment Clause case law stating that religion fosters moral good and that in a pluralistic society religious expression cannot automatically be deemed threatening to those with different views.

Religion on Trial

Religion on Trial PDF Author: Phillip E. Hammond
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759106017
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
The free exercise of conscience is under threat in the United States. Already the conservative bloc of the Supreme Court is reversing the progress of religious liberty that had been steadily advancing. And this danger will only increase if more conservative judges are nominated to the court. This is the impassioned argument of Religion on Trial. Against Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Chief Justice Rehnquist, the authors argue that what the First Amendment protects is the freedom of individual conviction, not the rights of sectarian majorities to inflict their values on others. Beginning with an analysis of the origins of the Constitution and then following the history of significant church-state issues, Religion on Trial shows that the trajectory of American history has been toward greater freedoms for more Americans: freedom of religion moving gradually toward freedom of conscience regardless of religion. But in the last quarter-century, conservatives have gained political power and they are now attempting to limit the ability of the Court to protect the rights of individual conscience. Writing not just as scholars, but as advocates of church-state separation, Hammond, Machacek, and Mazur make the strong case that every American needs to pay attention to what is happening on the Surpeme Court or risk losing the liberties of conscience and religion that have been gained so far.

Religious Influence in Supreme Court Decision Making

Religious Influence in Supreme Court Decision Making PDF Author: Mary L.. Carver
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Freedom of religion
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
In cases where freedom of religion is at the heart of the legal question before the U.S. Supreme Court, political ideology alone cannot explain the decisions' outcomes. Research reveals that other factors may explain the decisional behavior of Supreme Court Justices in freedom of religion cases. Although religion plays a large role in America's political landscape and elite decision-making, very little scholarship examines the role the faith traditions of the Justices play in the decisions of the Supreme Court. In my dissertation, I argue that the dominant policy-based models of Supreme Court decision- making provide an incomplete framework for understanding religious influence in Supreme Court decision-making. My dissertation research uses the social background model to investigate the influence of the Justices' faith traditions in the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause and Establishment Clause cases decided by the Supreme Court. Freedom of religion cases are examined based upon the assumption that Justices hold very personal and perhaps strong religious beliefs that may invoke a religiously influenced response when deciding freedom of religion cases. The data for this research is based on all freedom of religion cases decided by the Supreme Court from 1946 to 2005. Unlike prior research, this study attempts to determine whether the faith traditions of the Justices, as the primary independent variable, influence Court outcomes during this timeframe. The findings reveal that some faith traditions are significantly correlated to the Justices' voting behavior in religion cases. This research reveals that the level of significance varies as to the type of case, whether the case concerns a Free Exercise or Establishment of religion, and the political ideology of the Justice. (p. VII).

Enlisting Faith

Enlisting Faith PDF Author: Ronit Y. Stahl
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674981316
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
A century ago, as the United States prepared to enter World War I, the military chaplaincy included only mainline Protestants and Catholics. Today it counts Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Christian Scientists, Buddhists, Seventh-day Adventists, Hindus, and evangelicals among its ranks. Enlisting Faith traces the uneven processes through which the military struggled with, encouraged, and regulated religious pluralism over the twentieth century. Moving from the battlefields of Europe to the jungles of Vietnam and between the forests of Civilian Conservation Corps camps and meetings in government offices, Ronit Y. Stahl reveals how the military borrowed from and battled religion. Just as the state relied on religion to sanction war and sanctify death, so too did religious groups seek recognition as American faiths. At times the state used religion to advance imperial goals. But religious citizens pushed back, challenging the state to uphold constitutional promises and moral standards. Despite the constitutional separation of church and state, the federal government authorized and managed religion in the military. The chaplaincy demonstrates how state leaders scrambled to handle the nation’s deep religious, racial, and political complexities. While officials debated which clergy could serve, what insignia they would wear, and what religions appeared on dog tags, chaplains led worship for a range of faiths, navigated questions of conscience, struggled with discrimination, and confronted untimely death. Enlisting Faith is a vivid portrayal of religious encounters, state regulation, and the trials of faith—in God and country—experienced by the millions of Americans who fought in and with the armed forces.

Religion and Social Justice

Religion and Social Justice PDF Author: S. Thakur
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230374441
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
This book is a philosophical examination of the relationship between religion and social justice. Its main thesis is that, since the primary purpose of religion is the moral and spiritual transformation of human nature, it ought not to be construed as a direct instrument of social justice on earth - as it is by Liberation theologians, for example, as well as by many liberal Christians and Jews. Indirectly, however, religion may well be a pre-condition of social justice. For it can be argued that, without the counteracting effects of the moral and spiritual values prescribed by religion, the liberal vision of individual rights and social justice may be self-defeating. Humanity is best served if this liberal vision is counterbalanced by the completely contrary utopia enshrined in the biblical idea of the kingdom of God, and its equivalents in the other great religions of the world.

Jesus, Jobs, and Justice

Jesus, Jobs, and Justice PDF Author: Bettye Collier-Thomas
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307593053
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 737

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Book Description
“The Negroes must have Jesus, Jobs, and Justice,” declared Nannie Helen Burroughs, a nationally known figure among black and white leaders and an architect of the Woman’s Convention of the National Baptist Convention. Burroughs made this statement about the black women’s agenda in 1958, as she anticipated the collapse of Jim Crow segregation and pondered the fate of African Americans. Following more than half a century of organizing and struggling against racism in American society, sexism in the National Baptist Convention, and the racism and paternalism of white women and the Southern Baptist Convention, Burroughs knew that black Americans would need more than religion to survive and to advance socially, economically, and politically. Jesus, jobs, and justice are the threads that weave through two hundred years of black women’s experiences in America. Bettye Collier-Thomas’s groundbreaking book gives us a remarkable account of the religious faith, social and political activism, and extraordinary resilience of black women during the centuries of American growth and change. It shows the beginnings of organized religion in slave communities and how the Bible was a source of inspiration; the enslaved saw in their condition a parallel to the suffering and persecution that Jesus had endured. The author makes clear that while religion has been a guiding force in the lives of most African Americans, for black women it has been essential. As co-creators of churches, women were a central factor in their development. Jesus, Jobs, and Justice explores the ways in which women had to cope with sexism in black churches, as well as racism in mostly white denominations, in their efforts to create missionary societies and form women’s conventions. It also reveals the hidden story of how issues of sex and sexuality have sometimes created tension and divisions within institutions. Black church women created national organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women, the National League of Colored Republican Women, and the National Council of Negro Women. They worked in the interracial movement, in white-led Christian groups such as the YWCA and Church Women United, and in male-dominated organizations such as the NAACP and National Urban League to demand civil rights, equal employment, and educational opportunities, and to protest lynching, segregation, and discrimination. And black women missionaries sacrificed their lives in service to their African sisters whose destiny they believed was tied to theirs. Jesus, Jobs, and Justice restores black women to their rightful place in American and black history and demonstrates their faith in themselves, their race, and their God.

Doing Justice to Mercy

Doing Justice to Mercy PDF Author: Jonathan Rothchild
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813934222
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
It is often assumed that the law and religion address different spheres of human life. Religion and ethics articulate complex systems of moral reasoning that concern norms, deliberation of ends, cultivation of disposition, and transformation of moral agency. Law, in contrast, seeks to govern human conduct through procedural justice, rights, and public good. Doing Justice to Mercy challenges this assumption by presenting the reader with an urgent conversation between the law and religion that yields a constructive approach, both theoretically and practically, to the complex role of mercy in our legal process. Authored by legal practitioners, activists, and theorists in addition to theologians and ethicists, the essays collected here are informed by timeless principles, and yet they could not be timelier. The trend in sentencing moves toward an increased severity, and the number of incarcerated people in the United States is at an all-time high. In the half-decade since 9/11, moreover, homeland security has established itself as a permanent fixture in our lives. In this atmosphere, the current volume seeks initially to clarify how justice and mercy intertwine in relation to a number of issues, such as rehabilitation, the death penalty, domestic violence, and war crimes. Exploring the legal, philosophical, and theological grounds for mercy in our courts, the discussion then moves to the practical ways in which mercy may be implemented. Contributors:Marc Mauer, The Sentencing Project * Lois Gehr Livezey, McCormick Theological Seminary * Ernie Lewis, Public Advocate, Commonwealth of Kentucky * Jonathan Rothchild, Loyola Marymount University * Albert W. Alschuler, Northwestern University School of Law * David Scheffer, Northwestern University School of Law * David Little, Harvard Divinity School * Matthew Myer Boulton, Andover Newton Theological School * Mark Lewis Taylor, Princeton Theological Seminary * Sarah Coakley, Cambridge University * William Schweiker, University of Chicago Divinity School * Kevin Jung, College of William and Mary * Peter J. Paris, Princeton Theological Seminary * W. Clark Gilpin, University of Chicago Divinity School * William C. Placher, Wabash College

Religion, Education and the State

Religion, Education and the State PDF Author: Mark Strasser
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317067339
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
In the context of education, Church and State issues are of growing importance and appear to be increasingly divisive. This volume critically examines the developing jurisprudence relating to religion in the schools beginning with Everson v. Board of Education, where the US Supreme Court discussed the wall of separation between Church and State. The study traces both how the Court's views have evolved during this period and how, through recharacterizations of past opinions and the facts underlying them, the Court has appeared to interpret Establishment Clause guarantees in light of the past jurisprudence when in reality that jurisprudence has been turned on its head. The Court not only offers an unstable jurisprudence that is more likely to promote than avoid the problems that the Establishment Clause was designed to prevent, but approaches Establishment Clause issues in a way that decreases the likelihood that an acceptable compromise on these important issues can be reached. The study focuses on the situation in the US but the important issue of religion, education and the state has great relevance in many jurisdictions.

Religion and the Law of Church and State and the Supreme Court (Classic Reprint)

Religion and the Law of Church and State and the Supreme Court (Classic Reprint) PDF Author: Philip B. Kurland
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9780260718921
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Excerpt from Religion and the Law of Church and State and the Supreme Court The election of a Catholic as President of the United States and the excitement over the proposed national aid-to-education bills have raised the debate over the proper relationship between church and state, God and Caesar, religion and law, to an unprecedented crescendo in this country. The subject is hardly a new one. Probably in prehistoric times, as among primitive peoples today, frequent power conflicts arose between the medi cine man and the chief. Certainly the problem was known to the Greeks and the Romans, though merger of the contestants frequently muted the issues. It provided the dominant theme for six hundred years of European history. The very slow development of the notion of religious toleration and the absence of any notion of separation of church and state in the English speaking world outside of America, both before and after the American Revolution, amply demonstrate the continued vitality of the problem, with dimensions until now unknown in America. Thus, for example, it may surprise some that, by law, religious qualifications for public office in England continued late into the nineteenth century. And perhaps equally disquieting is the fact that the ultimate arbiter of Anglican church doctrine is, even today, not any ecclesiastical authority but the English Parliament, most of whose members are not actively affiliated with the Anglican church. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.