Religious Liberty in American Education

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles C. Haynes
Keyword(s):  
Civic Education ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
School Administrators ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Community Stakeholders ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Religion In Public Life ◽  
State Separation

Many educators and school administrators receive little or no civic education about the history and significance of the religious liberty clauses of the First Amendment. As a result, many Americans are misled about the constitutional role of religion in public life, confused about the meaning of church–state separation, and uncertain about the limits of the free exercise of religion. This chapter details the broad consensus that has been made about the principles of rights, responsibility, and respect that flow from the religious liberty clauses of the First Amendment. This chapter argues that by applying this constitutional framework, educators and community stakeholders can forge a shared understanding of the place of religion in public life. They will be able to work together to sustain America’s bold experiment in living with our deepest differences.

Litigating Religions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher McCrudden
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Religious Schools ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Religious Dress ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Religion In Public Life

Religions are a problem for human rights, and human rights are a problem for religions. And both are problems for courts. This essay presents an interpretation of how religion and human rights interrelate in the legal context, and how this relationship might be reconceived to make this relationship somewhat less fraught. It examines how the resurgent role of religion in public life gives rise to tensions with key aspects of human rights doctrine, including freedom of religion and anti-discrimination law, and how these tensions cannot be considered as simply transitional. The context for the discussion is the increasingly troubled area of human rights litigation involving religious arguments, such as wearing religious dress at work, conscientious objections by marriage registrars, admission of children to religious schools, prohibitions on same-sex marriage, and access to abortion. This essay examines doctrinal developments in these areas, where standoffs between organized religions and human rights advocates in the courts have been common. The essay argues that, if we wish to establish a better dialogue between the contending views, we must first identify a set of recurring problems identifiable in such litigation. But to address these recurring problems requires more than simply identifying these problems and requires changes both in human rights theory and in religious understandings of human rights. The essay argues that, by paying close attention to developments in human rights litigation, we can make theoretical progress.

Religion, Nationalism, and the Politics of Secularism

2015 ◽  
pp. 99-123
Author(s):  
Scott Hibbard
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Religion And Nationalism ◽  
Exclusive Or ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Religion In Public Life ◽  
Point Of Departure

This chapter examines the relationship between religion, nationalism, and the state and advocates a truly neutral conception of secularism. The point of departure is an analysis of the recurring debate over the proper role of religion in public life. Particular attention is given to the relationship between religion and nationalism, the secularization thesis, and the reasons religion remains an important part of modern politics. The chapter then turns toward the “politics of secularism,” and the tension between liberal (or ecumenical) secularism in theory and its practice. At issue is whether the secular tradition is invariably exclusive, or whether secularism as implemented has simply failed to live up to its ecumenical promise. The closing section examines this question in light of the justpeace tradition, and offers an endorsement for a re-conceptualized vision of secularism that is genuinely defined by neutrality in matters of religion and belief.

Frederick Douglass

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. H. Dilbeck
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
The Political ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
Religious Ideals ◽  
Just Society ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Religion In Public Life

From his enslavement to freedom, Frederick Douglass was one of America's most extraordinary champions of liberty and equality. Throughout his long life, Douglass was also a man of profound religious conviction. In this concise and original biography, D. H. Dilbeck offers a provocative interpretation of Douglass's life through the lens of his faith. In an era when the role of religion in public life is as contentious as ever, Dilbeck provides essential new perspective on Douglass's place in American history. Douglass came to faith as a teenager among African American Methodists in Baltimore. For the rest of his life, he adhered to a distinctly prophetic Christianity. Imitating the ancient Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ, Douglass boldly condemned evil and oppression, especially when committed by the powerful. Dilbeck shows how Douglass's prophetic Christianity provided purpose and unity to his wide-ranging work as an author, editor, orator, and reformer. As "America's Prophet," Douglass exposed his nation’s moral failures and hypocrisies in the hopes of creating a more just society. He admonished his fellow Americans to truly abide by the political and religious ideals they professed to hold most dear. Two hundred years after his birth, Douglass's prophetic voice remains as timely as ever.

Religious Peacebuilding

2015 ◽  
pp. 2-32
Author(s):  
Atalia Omer
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Religion In Public Life

The emphasis of the field of religious peacebuilding on the potentially constructive role of religion in transforming conflicts should not preclude considering how the field might, and even should, also challenge religious traditions and political ideologies. Exploration of religious traditions’ peace-promoting resources and the very field of religious peacebuilding are largely grounded in Scott Appleby’s The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation. However, Appleby’s insight is misapplied if a preoccupation with theological retrieval impedes an examination of how interpretations of events from multiple perspectives may challenge and transform religious and political systems. Cultivating religious peacebuilding as a rigorous academic enterprise will entail questioning the field’s reliance on secularist presumptions about religion, which facilitate complicity with religion’s contribution to injustices. It also requires reconsidering the presumed unidirectionality of religion and historical change and connecting the field to broader conversations about religion in public life.

Politics and Beatitude

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Positive Relation ◽  
Shared Commitment ◽  
Theological Language ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Religion In Public Life ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

The limits and secularity of political life have been signature themes of modern Augustinianism, often couched in non-theological language of realism and the role of religion in public life. In dialogue with Gilbert Meilaender, this article inverts and theologizes that interest by asking how Augustinian pilgrims might characterize the positive relation of political history to saving history and the ways in which political action in time might teach us something about the nature of salvation that comes to us from beyond history. This relation of continuity and discontinuity eludes dogmatic formulation, but the goal of the present article is to see where a shared Augustinianism and a shared commitment to aspects of the liberal political tradition might find illuminating disagreement.

scholarly journals Freedom, Responsibility, and Religion in Public Life: From Luther to Levinas and Arendt

Open Theology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 428-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Welz
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
God's Word ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Religion In Public Life ◽  
The Voice

Abstract While Luther affirmed the believer’s freedom in relation to the world, he described the human being as unfree in relation to God from whom we receive everything and without whom we can achieve nothing good. This article reconsiders the relation between autonomy and heteronomy in the context of a phenomenology of listening: if faith comes from listening (ex auditu) and auditus is not a human capacity, but rather the effect of God’s Word that operates within the human being, how is our (un)freedom to be understood? Further, if a human being’s self-relation is expressed by the ‘voice’ of conscience, which can be ignored only at the cost of losing the unity with oneself, how is responsibility to be conceptualized when the call comes both from ‘within’ and from ‘without’? Finally, what are the implications of this view of the person for the role of religion in public life and the ways in which religious conflicts can be resolved? In an anachronistic thought experiment, Luther is brought into a posthumous dialogue with those that he excluded from the discussion: the Jews. In particular, his view concerning the justmentioned questions is contrasted with insights by Emmanuel Levinas and Hannah Arendt.

Resisting the Eclipse of Dignitatis Humanae

Horizons ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (01) ◽  
pp. 33-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Doak
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Dignitatis Humanae ◽  
Solid Foundation ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Religion In Public Life

ABSTRACTVatican II's announcement of the Catholic Church's acceptance of religious freedom in its Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae) ought to have ushered in a period of ecumenical agreement on the topic of religious disestablishment. Instead, forty years after this most controversial document was promulgated, we find that public, academic, and even ecclesial discussions of the role of religion in public life are confused and in fact deeply contentious. The problem, however, is not that Dignitatis Humanae was incoherent or naïve in its understanding of religious freedom, but that we have failed to grasp its nuanced and coherent manner of reconciling a robust religious freedom with a profound view of the political significance of religious beliefs. Careful attention to this Declaration provides a solid foundation for continuing political theology and a public presence of religion without infringing the important value of religious “disestablishment.”

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