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.

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.

Law, Religion, and the Present Danger

Worldview ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 46-53
Author(s):  
Harold J. Berman
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Establishment Clause ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
Group Activities ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Governmental Support ◽  
The One ◽  
Governmental Control

When the word "law" is juxtaposed with the word "religion," an American lawyer today is apt to think immediately of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution with its double protection against any governmental interference in "the free exercise" of religion on the one hand and against any governmental "establishment" of religion on the other. From the standpoint of contemporary American constitutional law, religion has become the personal and private affair of individual citizens or groups of citizens. Indeed, in recent decades our courts, in interpreting the "free exercise" clause, have gone far toward immunizing individual and group activities from governmental control, whether federal or state, whenever they are considered by the persons engaging in them to be of a religious character; and at the same time, under the "establishment" clause the courts have struck down most forms even of indirect governmental support of religion, whether federal or state.

Parents’ Rights and Children’s Interests

1997 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-385
Author(s):  
Michael David Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Educational Policy ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Adequate Education ◽  
Stable Family ◽  
Informed Citizenry ◽  
The One ◽  
Children's Interests ◽  
To Receive

When is a liberal democratic state justified in enforcing an educational policy on its citizenry? This question is especially relevant in contexts where religious minorities wish to receive exemptions from mandatory educational policies. Parents in such groups argue that these educational demands threaten the traditional ways of life of their communities, infringing on their parental right to raise their children as they see fit. Parents may also claim that their free exercise rights, as granted by the First Amendment, are violated by an educational policy that requires them to breach a religious command specifying a certain type of religious upbringing for their children. The customary way that both the courts and commentators have addressed this issue is to represent it as a conflict among four divergent interests: 1) The child’s interest both in an adequate education and in the maintenance of a stable family and cultural community; 2) the parents’ interest in controlling the upbringing of their children and in protecting their right to the free exercise of religion; 3) the community’s interest in preserving its identity; 4) and, the State’s interest, on the one hand, in educating its children in order to maintain an informed citizenry capable of participating in the economic and political spheres, and on the other hand, in the maintenance of diversity.While each of these interests appears significant and relevant to the enforcement of an educational policy, I will challenge the traditional way of addressing this problem as a balancing of these interests. Instead, I argue that the interests of children should be given primacy, and only after these interests have been addressed can the interests of others be given weight in determining and enforcing an educational policy.

Schmitt, Carl (1888–1985)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ludovic Dyzenhaus
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic Constitution

Carl Schmitt was a conservative critic of the Weimar Republic’s liberal-democratic constitution. After Hitler’s rise to power, he allied himself briefly to Nazism, and despite having fallen from favour and having revised his position even before the war, was never able to rehabilitate himself from the Nazi taint. Interned at Nuremberg in 1945, he was never brought to trial, but was banned from teaching thereafter. His critique of liberalism lay in liberalism’s alleged inability to deal with the nature of politics. Schmitt continues to exert a vast influence on German public law, legal theory and political philosophy, as well as on European right-wing thought. His work remains important for liberals and opponents of liberalism for the challenges it poses to the neutrality of the liberal state and its legal order.

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.

scholarly journals Features of the expression of freedom of conscience in the Soviet era of Ukraine

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (19) ◽  
pp. 188-190
Author(s):  
Oleh Kyselov
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
Interfaith Relations ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Scientific Atheism ◽  
Practical Level

Soviet scientific atheism left us a rather interesting heritage. On the one hand, there are a number of powerful and still valuable works, which, at least, have not lost their heuristic attractiveness. On the other hand, there are mountains of ideological and propagandistic literature of interest to researchers of various aspects of the history of the USSR. Topics such as state-church and interfaith relations, freedom of conscience and religious freedom, which nowadays became one of the most researched in the independent Ukraine, were on the periphery of research interests in Soviet times. In particular, the notion of "freedom of conscience" was not too developed and interpreted in Soviet religious studies, since it was believed that the classics of Marxism-Leninism gave it an exhaustive understanding. Because of this, the Soviet scientific atheists left three things: 1) criticizing the understanding of freedom of conscience by bourgeois (including clerical) thinkers; 2) compare the theoretical and practical level of freedom of conscience in socialist countries and, finally, 3) comprehend Soviet practices in the field of religion in accordance with the principles of Leninist atheistic doctrine.

World Christianity, ‘World Religions’ and the Challenge of Insider Movements

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-103
Author(s):  
Christian J. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
World Religion ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Historical Series ◽  
Enlightenment Project ◽  
World Christianity ◽  
Other World ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
The One ◽  
Insider Movements

While studies in World Christianity have frequently referred to Christianity as a ‘world religion’, this article argues that such a category is problematic. Insider movements directly challenge the category, since they are movements of faith in Jesus that fall within another ‘world religion’ altogether – usually Islam or Hinduism. Rather than being an oddity of the mission frontier, insider movements expose ambiguities already present in World Christianity studies concerning the concept of ‘religion’ and how we understand the unity of the World Christian movement. The article first examines distortions that occur when religion is referred to on the one hand as localised practices which can be reoriented and taken up into World Christianity and, on the other hand, as ‘world religion’, where Christianity is sharply discontinuous with other world systems. Second, the article draws from the field of religious studies, where several writers have argued that the scholarly ‘world religion’ category originates from a European Enlightenment project whose modernist assumptions are now questionable. Third, the particular challenge of insider movements is expanded on – their use of non-Christian cultural-religious systems as spaces for Christ worship, and their redrawing of assumed Christian boundaries. Finally, the article sketches out two principles for understanding Christianity's unity in a way that takes into account the religious (1) as a historical series of cultural-religious transmissions and receptions of the Christian message, which emanates from margins like those being crossed by insider movements, and (2) as a religiously syncretic process of change that occurs with Christ as the prime authority.

Editor's Corner: NAASR Membership and the 'Bulletin for the Study of Religion'

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 50-51
Author(s):  
Philip Tite
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Professional Issues ◽  
The One ◽  
Theoretical Reflection ◽  
Short Essays

The Editor’s Corner is an occasional space for the editors of the Bulletin to share their own, brief musings on theoretical or professional issues facing the discipline. Most of the short essays included, such as the one below, will first appear on the Bulletin’s blog. Our hope is that this section will open fresh lines of dialogue, debate, and theoretical reflection, with the editors playing a role as interlocutors with Bulletin readers (much as they do on the Bulletin’s blog). This particular musing comments on the recent Bulletin subscription agreement between Equinox and NAASR, while also exploring the importance of theory as a focus for a religious studies journal.

To Discriminate in Order to Fight Discrimination

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dolores Morondo Taramundi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
The Other ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
European Court ◽  
Main Technique ◽  
Antidiscrimination Law ◽  
The One ◽  
Paradoxical Results ◽  
Conflicts Of Rights

This chapter analyses arguments regarding conflicts of rights in the field of antidiscrimination law, which is a troublesome and less studied area of the growing literature on conflicts of rights. Through discussion of Ladele and McFarlane v. The United Kingdom, a case before the European Court of Human Rights, the chapter examines how the construction of this kind of controversy in terms of ‘competing rights’ or ‘conflicts of rights’ seems to produce paradoxical results. Assessment of these apparent difficulties leads the discussion in two different directions. On the one hand, some troubles come to light regarding the use of the conflict of rights frame itself in the field of antidiscrimination law, particularly in relation to the main technique (‘balancing of rights’) to solve them. On the other hand, some serious consequences of the conflict of rights frame on the development of the antidiscrimination theory of the ECtHR are unearthed.

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