Part II, 4 Models of Religion–State Relations

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahdar Rex ◽  
Leigh Ian
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Competitive Market ◽  
Market Model ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
State Relations

This chapter surveys the various types of interaction between religion and government. The object is not to posit yet another typology of religion-state relations, but to consider which model or models best advance religious freedom in a liberal state. These models include theocracy, Erastianism, separationism and secularism, religious ‘establishment’, Pluralist models, neutrality models, and the competitive market model. Overall, it is difficult to single out one model of the religion-state relationship as indisputably the best in terms of religious freedom. Several systems — mild establishment, pluralism, and substantive neutrality — seem to score highly in that they recognize that a measure of interaction and cooperation between government and religious communities is useful. Others, by contrast, such as theocracy and Erastianism, can be safely rejected as inimicable with religious freedom. Some models, such as separationism, deserve at best only cautious approval. Its secularist philosophy can in practice produce a climate of hostility to religion and its free exercise.

The Invisible Center: Christian Liberalism in American Religious Freedom Jurisprudence

2019 ◽  
pp. 174387211986467
Author(s):  
Hannah Dick
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Establishment Clause ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Conceptual Tool ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Antidiscrimination Law ◽  
The One

This article interrogates the notion of liberal state neutrality when it comes to adjudicating religious freedom claims. Drawing on work in political theory, legal theory, and religious studies, I argue that Christianity is a central and invisible feature of liberalism. I then examine how Christian liberalism has shaped American religious freedom jurisprudence, analyzing contradictory Supreme Court decisions involving free exercise and establishment claims. On the one hand, the language of secular purpose has safeguarded several Christian expressions from Establishment Clause scrutiny. On the other hand, since the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993), some Christian conservative legal advocates have repositioned Christianity as a persecuted religion requiring free exercise exemptions from antidiscrimination law. That the Court has recently obliged this more narrow understanding of religious freedom demonstrates the resilience of the Christian liberal state. While the cases are drawn from the American context, I suggest that the language of Christian liberalism is a useful conceptual tool for analyzing religious freedom claims in a variety of liberal democratic contexts.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM WITHOUT EQUALITY? RELIGIOUS MINORITIES AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION IN ARGENTINA

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Martin Vives
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
The State ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Unequal Treatment ◽  
Catholic Faith ◽  
The Right ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
State Relations

AbstractThe Argentine Constitution contains two provisions regarding church-state relations. The first one recognizes the right of all people to the free exercise of religion. The second one provides that the state must financially support the Catholic Church. Based on this latter clause, over the years a complex regulatory scheme has been developed that differentiates that church from all the other churches and religions. Those differences are addressed in this article. The author argues that the religious establishment does not depend only on how the state defines itself (e.g., through a declaration in the constitution), but also on the way in which it treats people based on their religion. If that treatment is unequal—for example, when there are legal privileges only to a single church—then there is a kind of establishment of religion. It has been claimed that the religious establishment is not itself incompatible with religious freedom. In arguing that religious minorities can hold a different opinion, the author offers a brief account of the problems faced by non-Catholic faith communities in Argentina because of the state's unequal treatment. Finally, the author analyzes whether the reasons given to justify the legal differences between religions are acceptable. Otherwise, it could be said that there is discrimination—at least, in a broad sense—against religious minorities. While this article focuses on the Argentine case, the issues addressed are relevant to any country dealing with the unequal treatment of people based on their religion.

Patterns and Determinants of Religious Change in the Modern Period

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Functional Differentiation ◽  
Market Model ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
State Spending ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Government Regulations ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Determining Factors

Chapter 14 does not design a general theory of religious change, but develops a multiple theoretical perspective including various theoretical elements, which are instrumental for explaining religious changes and which can be combined flexibly. In brief, they are: 1. Functional differentiation as a rule stands in a strained relationship to the integrational capacity of religious communities and churches. If, however, religious identities are linked with non-religious, for example, political, national, or economic interests, religion and church are strengthened. 2. Processes of individualization mostly have an erosive impact on religious ties. 3. In contrast to the assumptions of the market model, religious pluralism does not foster religious vitality, but actually inhibits it. In the case of conflict, though, religious diversity can fuel religious passions. Other determining factors such as government regulations of the religious sector, state spending on the welfare system, social inequality, immigration, and path dependency are also taken into account.

scholarly journals Litigating the Limits of Religion: Minority and Majority Concerns about Institutional Religious Liberty in India

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 400
Author(s):  
Chad M. Bauman
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Considerable Effort

Western religious liberty advocates tend to focus on restrictions placed on minority religious communities, particularly when advocating abroad, that is, outside of the country in which they reside. In all contemporary democracies, however, adherents of religious majorities also express concerns about religious liberty. For this reason, the article considers both minority and majority concerns about institutional religious freedom in India. This essay provides an overview of religious freedom issues, with a particular focus on institutions, though, as I acknowledge, it is not always simple to distinguish individual from institutional matters of religious freedom. After describing various minority and majority concerns about institutional religious freedom in India, and demonstrating that many of them are related to the Indian government’s distinctive approach to managing religion and religious institutions, I make the argument that while some cross-cutting issues provide the possibility of interreligious understanding and solidarity in matters of religious liberty advocacy, such solidarity will not emerge without considerable effort because of the fact that debates about religious liberty in India often fundamentally involve debates about the very nature of religion itself, and these debates tend to divide rather than unite India’s majority and minority religious communities.

scholarly journals RELASI AGAMA DAN NEGARA

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Edi Gunawan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Religion And State ◽  
The Right ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Descriptive Method

This paper examines religious and state relations of Islamic thought perspective. This study aims to describe how the relationship between religion and state in the view of Islam. The method used in obtaining data is descriptive method through literature study. The results of the study show that among Muslim figures or thinkers such as Nurcholish Madjid and Abdur Rahman Wahid agree that there is a constructive relationship between state and religion which by revivalists separates it. Some of the indicators are: (1) Islam gives the principles of the formation of a state with the concept of khalīfah ,dawlah, or hukūmah, (2) Islam emphasizes the democratic values of truth and justice, and (3) Islam upholds Human Rights by stating that the basic rights that human beings bring ever since they are born are the right of religious freedom. Therefore, Islam essentially emphasizes the importance of human rights to be upheld in a state, because human rights are rights that should not be disturbed and deprived from the person who has the right.

scholarly journals Church-State Relations in the Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-1921)

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Dimitry Gegenava
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Republic Of Georgia ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church

Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918-1921) was one of the unique states in the first quarter of XX century. Despite the historical relations between the Church and the State in Georgia, the social-democratic government changed its official policy and chose French secularism, which was very unusual for the country. This was incorporated in the Constitution of 1921. This article is about the Georgian church-state relations during 1918-1921, the positive and negative aspects of the chosen form of secularism and the challenges that the newly independent State faced in the sphere of religious freedom until the Soviet occupation.

scholarly journals Religious Neutrality in the Early Republic

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jud Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
Free Exercise Clause ◽  
Conscientious Objectors ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
The Government ◽  
Constitutional Meaning ◽  
Military Draft

Governmental neutrality is the heart of the modern Free Exercise Clause. Mindful of this core principle, which prevents the government from treating individuals differently because of their religious convictions, the Supreme Court held in Employment Division v. Smith that a neutral law can be constitutionally applied despite any incidental burdens it might impose on an individual�s exercise of religion. Conscientious objectors such as Quakers, for instance, do not have a constitutional right to be exempt from a military draft. Thus, neutrality now forms both the core and the outer limit of constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom. Judged according to founding-era views, however, this interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause is deeply problematic. Although historical scholarship has focused on the particular issue of religious exemptions, this Article takes a different approach by reexamining early debates about neutrality itself. These neglected sources demonstrate that modern cases invert the founding-era conception of religious freedom. For the Founders, religious freedom was primarily an unalienable natural right to practice religion�not a right that depended on whether a law was neutral. This evidence illuminates not only a significant transition in constitutional meaning since the Founding but also the extent to which modern priorities often color our understanding of the past.

Secularism and US Religion Jurisprudence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Corbin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Establishment Clause ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
Free Exercise Clause ◽  
Constitutional Jurisprudence

Religious surveys are finding greater percentages of Americans who self-identify as secular. At the same time, religious exemptions under the Free Exercise Clause have become more difficult to obtain. However, religion jurisprudence in the United States has not become more secular for two reasons. First, this greater unwillingness to grant constitutional exemptions reflects a shift in constitutional jurisprudence from “separationism” to “neutrality.” Rather than building a wall between church and state, the Establishment Clause is now interpreted to impose fewer restraints on state-sponsored religion. Second, statutes like the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and its state counterparts have not only reestablished separationist era levels of protection for religious liberty but increased them. The result is a religion jurisprudence where religion is accommodated more than ever, while the state has more leeway to advance religion. This combination has unfortunate consequences for both secular people and core secular values, such as antidiscrimination.

Paths of Duty: Religion, Marriage, and the Press in a Transatlantic Scandal, 1835–1858

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 636-662
Author(s):  
SUZANNA KRIVULSKAYA
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
English Court ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Press ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Catholic Church

When the Rev. Pierce Connelly denounced Protestantism and converted to Catholicism in 1835, he inadvertently started a small newspaper war among the burgeoning religious press in America. While Catholic periodicals celebrated their newest addition in print, Protestant newspapermen were scandalized. They worried about how the clerical husband's conversion might affect his marital life should he pursue ordination in the Catholic Church. Soon, the Connellys dissolved their marriage in Rome and moved to England, where Pierce became a priest, and his wife Cornelia entered a convent. When, thirteen years later, Pierce reconverted and sued Cornelia “for the restoration of conjugal rights” in an English court, the case became an international sensation – with both British and American newspapers covering the developments and using the saga to comment on larger religious and political issues of their time. The two scandals demonstrate how the transatlantic press debated contested global concerns about the limits of religious freedom, the changing nature of marriage, church–state relations, and international law.

The Secularized State

2020 ◽  
pp. 220-236
Author(s):  
Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde ◽  
Mirjam Künkler ◽  
Tine Stein
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Freedom Of Association ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Federal Constitutional ◽  
Freedom Of Belief ◽  
The Right

In this article Böckenförde contrasts his concept of open encompassing neutrality (found in most Scandinavian countries and in Germany) with that of distancing neutrality, as practised in France. While the latter champions negative religious freedom, open encompassing neutrality aims for a balancing of negative and positive religious freedom. Religious freedom for Böckenförde is multidimensional and includes the right to have (or not) a religious faith (freedom of belief), to affirm (or not) this faith privately and openly (freedom to profess), to exercise (or not) one’s religion publicly (freedom of worship), and to join together (or not) in religious communities (religious freedom of association). The correlate to these individual and group rights is the open and overarching principle of the state’s neutrality towards religion and other worldviews, entailing a prohibition on the state justifying law on religious grounds. Furthermore, it requires the state not to privilege religion over non-religion and one religious faith over another. Siding with the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court (at a time when he was not a sitting judge), Böckenförde underlines that even religious communities who reject the democratic state have the right to be recognized and legally protected. What matters is not whether communities accept or reject the state, but whether they obey or violate its laws. This was the court’s view on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and it must also be applied, Böckenförde writes, to religious fundamentalists who do not accept the secular order, as long as they do not violate any laws.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document