It is difficult to pinpoint precisely when the debate about religious accommodation became the single most important topic in academic and legal debates about religious freedom, but two things are nearly certain: (1) it has now decisively displaced the issue of religious displays and religion in public as the preeminent…
Rogan, “The Moral Economists”
I don’t know too much about the subject, but the description of this new book on the history of economics from Princeton University Press caught my attention. The Moral Economists: R.H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E.P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism , by Cambridge historian Tim Rogan, recounts the criticisms…
Religious Challenge To Missouri Informed Consent Abortion Law Goes To State High Court
In Doe v. Greitens , (MO App., Oct. 3, 2017), a Missouri appellate court transferred to the state Supreme Court an appeal in a religious freedom challenge to the state’s abortion Informed Consent Law. Missouri’s law requires that a person seeking an abortion first receive a booklet containing specified information,…
Law and religion round-up – 7th January
Marriage and parochial fees, Gift Aid, Scientologists, hijabs, Brexit – and priority for Buddhist monks… Marriage certificates The Sunday Times reported (£) on New Year’s Eve that the Home Office is likely to approve the inclusion of mothers’ names on marriage certificates. According to the report, “A Home Office source…
“Christianity and Natural Law” (Doe, ed.)
Within Christian thought, natural law is typically seen as a Catholic concept, indeed, as a concept that distinguishes Catholicism from other Christian communions, like Orthodoxy and Protestantism–the former of which rejects natural law as too cerebral and the latter as too optimistic, given fallen human nature. A new collection of…
The SEC, same sex marriage, and the Primate’s Meeting
Primus generates less heat than some predicted The Scottish Episcopal Church has issued the following Press Release on the address of the Primus to the Anglican Communion Primates’ Meeting, [our emphasis]. Primus addresses the Anglican Communion Primates’ Meeting October 3, 2017 Primus addresses the Anglican Communion Primates’ Meeting on Scottish…
Free speech and vilification in the marriage law postal survey
Australia is involved in a debate about whether same sex marriage should be introduced. The question is being put to the electors in the form of a voluntary postal survey, the question in which is simply: “Should the law be changed to allow same sex couples to marry?” The original…
Farrelly, “Anti-Catholicism in America: 1620-1860”
Hostility to Catholicism is one of the hearty perennials of the study of law and religion in America. I have recently argued i n this piece that there was an important shift in the political rhetoric of the late 19th and early 20th century from accentuating anti-Catholic to anti-Christian themes.…
Dismissal for opposition to same-sex adoption: Mr R Page
Is opposition on grounds of conscience to adoption by same-sex couples protected by equality legislation and the ECHR? That was the issue before the Tribunal in Mr R Page v NHS Trust Development Authority [2017] UKET 2302433/2016 . The background At the time of his appointment as a Non-Executive Director…
New paper: “The Two Separations”
From the Law and Religion Forum: Here’s a new paper of mine, The Two Separations . Here’s the abstract: There is nothing self-evidently attractive about separation — whether of church and state or anything else — as a model for individual or collective life. Pursuing separation is not like pursuing…
“The Conversation” misleads on impacts of same sex marriage
Two pieces in the Australian online forum “The Conversation” today make misleading statements about the possible impacts of the recognition of same-sex marriage in Australia, and warrant some response. One article suggests that there is no doubt that churches will still be able to decline to solemnise same-sex marriages. The…
Review of NT discrimination law- guest blog
The Northern Territory government has released a discussion paper called Modernisation of the Anti-Discrimination Act (Sept 2017). It invites comments by 3 December 2017. You can almost get the tone of the paper from the title! After all, who in this fast-changing age could oppose anything called “modernisation”? But there…
Reluctant Judge Holds Cross On County Seal Is Unconstitutional
In Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. v. County of Lehigh , (ED PA, Sept. 28, 2017), a Pennsylvania federal district court held that a large, central Latin cross in the seal and flag of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania violate the Establishment Clause under the Lemon test and the endorsement test. However…
South Carolina Supreme Court Resolves Property Dispute In Episcopal Church
In The Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina v. The Episcopal Church, (SC Sup. Ct., Aug. 2, 2017), the 5-member South Carolina Supreme Court in 5 separate opinions spanning 77 pages resolved a property dispute that arose after a split in the Episcopal Church in South Carolina.…
European Court Affirms Jurisdiction of Ecclesiastical Courts
In Nagy v. Hungary, (ECHR, Sept. 14, 2017), the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, by a vote of 10-7, upheld the exclusive jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts over contractual disputes that are matters of ecclesiastical law. In the case, a pastor in the Reformed Church of Hungary…
Copson, “Secularism: Politics, Religion, and Freedom”
Until the modern period the integration of church (or other religion) and state (or political life) had been taken for granted. The political order was always tied to an official religion in Christian Europe, pre-Christian Europe, and in the Arabic world. But from the eighteenth century onwards, some European states…
Law and religion round-up – 24th September
A fe excepts rom the Law and Religion Blog UK’s roundup: Doug Chaplin: Living comfortably: the fiction of a stipend? which Gary Alderson conveniently summarizes as “a blog post on the recent press reports that Church of England stipends are enough to live on basically pointing out they are, as…
Laborde, “Liberalism’s Religion”
This seems to be a book not about liberalism as a kind of religion (or as valuing a particular kind of religion), but instead about what liberalism–particularly the secular liberalism of the kind championed by the author–ought to do with religion in today’s day and age. A book very […]…
Bennett, “Defending Faith: The Politics of the Christian Conservative Legal Movement”
Conservative Christianity has been and continues to be an important movement in American law. But it is difficult to read an even-handed account of it, since academic treatments tend to view it as a force of evil that must be identified, guarded against, and hopefully obliterated, and non-academic treatments […]…
“Agape, Justice, and Law” (Cochran & Calo eds.)
Here is an interesting set of essays on the relationship of the Christian virtue of agape– the distinterested love of others or love of neighbor–to law in general and a variety of legal disciplines in particular. The volume is pitched as an alternative to other more typical ways of […]…
Kaveny, “Ethics at the Edges of Law”
Later this year, Oxford University Press will publish a new book by lawyer and theologian Cathleen Kaveny, the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor of Law and Theology at Boston College. Professor Kavey presented her work at the inaugural session of our Center’s Colloquium in Law and Religion in 2012, […]…
Zelinsky, “Taxing the Church”
From Edward Zelinsky of Cardozo Law School comes this timely and important book about the relationship of religion and taxation in American law, Taxing the Church: Religion, Exemptions, Entanglement, and the Constitution . I was very pleased to read the entire manuscript in draft and to provide a blurb […]…
Christian pro-family leader wins five-year battle against ‘frivolous’ LGBT lawsuit
U.S. pastor and pro-family activist Scott Lively June 6, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — A federal district judge yesterday dismissed a leftist lawsuit against Christian pro-family advocate Scott Lively, who was sued for “crimes against humanity” for helping political and faith leaders in Uganda resist the LGBTQ agenda in the east […]…
Ontario Passes Law Allowing Gov’t to Seize Children From Parents Who Oppose Gender Transition
Canada’s Ontario province has passed legislation that allows the government to seize children from families if they refuse to accept their child’s chosen "gender identity" or "gender expression." Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reacts as he and his wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau (L) walk in the Vancouver Pride Parade […]…
State Department Releases 2016 International Religious Freedom Report
Yesterday the State Department released its 2016 International Religious Freedom Annual Report ( full text ). In remarks on the Report , Secretary of Sate Tillerson highlighted concerns about religious liberty in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Bahrain, China, Pakistan and Sudan. Importantly, Tillerson also emphasized the State Department’s conclusion […]…