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.

Challenges to Religious Freedom in the USA: Some Lessons from Global Crises

2020 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 540-559
Author(s):  
David Hollenbach
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Social Division ◽  
United States Today ◽  
Social Unity ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Roman Catholics

Religious freedom is a focus of controversy in the United States today. The leaders of some religious communities, particularly Evangelicals and Roman Catholics, object to policies that challenge their beliefs, often their beliefs regarding sex and reproduction, by appealing to their right to religious freedom. This leads others to see religious freedom as a threat to moral changes they regard as progress. Religious liberty threatens to become a source of social division and conflict. This article analyzes these conflicts and considers how the USA can address them more effectively by reflecting on several international challenges to religious freedom. These global cases show that the religious freedom controversies in the USA today call both religious communities and those with secular worldviews to recognize that social unity and respect for freedom should go together. Social unity requires respect for freedom, including the freedom of those with whom one disagrees.

Jewish religious communities in Kuban and Terek regions at the second half of the XIX - the beginning of the XX centuries

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10) ◽  
pp. 165-178
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Norkina
Keyword(s):  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Small Communities ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
History Of

The article is devoted to the history of the formation and features of the functioning of Jewish religious institutions outside the Pale of Settlement in the second half of the XIXth — early XXth centuries. The study is based on the materials of the Kuban and Terek regions, which had a somewhat different administrative and political structure from most other regions. Historically, the peculiarities of these areas influenced the policy of the authorities in towards the Jews, which influenced the activities of rabbis and synagogues. Despite the fact that the activities of rabbis and synagogues were constantly interrupted due to a number of external circumstances, members of local Jewish societies actively engaged in dialogue with the authorities and sought to revive religious buildings to life. Even small communities of Kuban and Terek tried to support their religious institutions and preserve the traditions of Judaism.

They Lived Under That Rule as Do Those Who Have Succeeded Them: Simultaneity and Conflict in the Foundation Narratives of a French Women’s Convent (10th–18th Centuries)

2021 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-97
Author(s):  
Steven Vanderputten
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Women Religious ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Eastern Region ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Memory Culture

While foundation accounts of medieval religious institutions have been the focus of intense scholarly interest for decades, so far there has been comparatively little interest in how successive versions related to each other in the perception of medieval and early modern observers. This essay considers that question via a case study of three such narratives about the 930s creation of Bouxières Abbey, a convent of women religious in France’s eastern region of Lorraine. At the heart of its argument stands the hypothesis that these conflicting narratives of origins were allowed to coexist in the memory culture of this small convent because they related to different arguments in its identity narrative. As such, it hopes to contribute to an ill-understood aspect of foundation narratives as a literary genre and a memorial practice in religious communities, with particular attention to long-term developments.

Lachiri v Belgium and Bans on Wearing Islamic Dress in the Courtroom: An Emerging Trend

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-53
Author(s):  
Kaushik Paul
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Recent Case ◽  
European Convention ◽  
European Court ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Right ◽  
Islamic Dress

In recent years, the wearing of Islamic dress in public spaces and elsewhere has generated widespread controversy all over Europe. The wearing of the hijab and other Islamic veils has been the subject of adjudication before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on many occasions. The most recent case before the ECtHR as to the prohibition on wearing the hijab is Lachiri v Belgium. In this case, the ECtHR held that a prohibition on wearing the hijab in the courtroom constitutes an infringement of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which guarantees the right to freedom of religion or belief. From the perspective of religious freedom, the ruling of the Strasbourg Court in Lachiri is very significant for many reasons. The purpose of this comment is critically to analyse the ECtHR's decision in Lachiri from the standpoint of religious liberty.

Prodigal Sons and Daughters?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Kselman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Paradoxical Situation ◽  
The Press

This chapter portrays several prominent Jewish converts to Catholicism, whose stories troubled the Jewish community of France in the first half of the nineteenth century. It focuses in particular on Alphonse and Théodore Ratisbonne, from a banking family in Strasbourg, who founded the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, a women’s order dedicated to the conversion of Jews. The aggressive proselytism of the Congregation in the 1840s generated public controversy about religious freedom and conversion. Hostile exchanges in the press over the work of the Congregation led to heightened tension between Catholics and Jews and a paradoxical situation in which greater religious liberty was accompanied by a stricter enforcement of religious boundaries.

EFFIGY VESSELS, RELIGIOUS INTEGRATION, AND THE ORIGINS OF THE CENTRAL MEXICAN PANTHEON

2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Carballo
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Contextual Analysis ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
Shared Understandings ◽  
Ritual Practices

AbstractInvestigations into the evolution of early religious institutions should emphasize how the ritual manipulation of symbolically charged objects generated shared understandings regarding divine entities among religious communities of practice. This study demonstrates that the origins of two distinctively central Mexican deities—the Old God of Fire and the Storm God—can best be understood through contextual analysis of effigy vessels depicting them during later Formative periods (ca. 600b.c.–a.d. 100). By presenting new examples of such effigy vessels and assembling contemporary counterparts from other central Mexican sites, we can better appreciate the Formative religious integration of the region and its legacy for the religious systems of later societies. Specifically, the primacy of the Old God of Fire and the Storm God to Aztec dedicatory offerings, and the private/domestic associations of the former and public/monumental associations of the latter at Teotihuacan were elaborations on patterns apparent in Formative ritual practices.

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.

MOSQUES IN POST-SOVIET KAZAKHSTAN: DISCOURSE INTERPRETATION AND REGULATORY PRACTICES

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 126-139
Author(s):  
Meiram KIKIMBAYEV ◽  
Kulshat MEDEUOVA ◽  
Adiya RAMAZANOVA
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Public Facilities ◽  
Religious Associations ◽  
The Status ◽  
Discourse Interpretation ◽  
The Law ◽  
Traditional Islam

The authors have analyzed the dynamics of the growth of number of mosques built by religious associations in post-Soviet Kazakhstan and noted a transition from their unregulated and chaotic construction (proliferation) to their precise association with specific maddhabs, and their construction norms conceptualized by religious institutions represented by the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Kazakhstan (DUMK). The types of cultic facilities and the actors are discussed and ranked according to the type of their involvement and partnership. We should note that the participation of various actors adds weight to the status of mosques as important public facilities. The authors have paid particular attention to the religious communities’ revised registration realized under the Law of the RK on Religious Activities and Religious Associations of 2011, which optimized the religious space, consolidated the positions of traditional Islam and, hence, standardized the rules related to mosque construction. Keywords: mosque, public space, post-Soviet realities, re-Islamization, re-appropriation, “mosque diplomacy,” religious communities, traditional Islam, DUMK.

The Implications of Religious Liberty

2017 ◽  
pp. 143-162
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Marriage Equality ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Protection Measures ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
The Public ◽  
Faith Based

The political terrain surrounding the legalization of same-sex marriage and the need to accommodate individual's faith based objections have been part of the public discussion since the passage of initial marriage equality statutes. These exemptions played an important part in the bill's passage and have gone largely unquestioned from proponents of marriage equality. This chapter discusses the heightened lawmaking efforts by opponents insisting on broad protection measures for religious claims based on opposition directed towards homosexuality. This Chapter discusses the resulting tension between religious freedom and marriage equality.

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