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Author: Christopher L. Eisgruber Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674034457 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 346
Book Description
Religion has become a charged token in a politics of division. In disputes about faith-based social services, public money for religious schools, the Pledge of Allegiance, Ten Commandments monuments, the theory of evolution, and many other topics, angry contestation threatens to displace America's historic commitment to religious freedom. Part of the problem, the authors argue, is that constitutional analysis of religious freedom has been hobbled by the idea of "a wall of separation" between church and state. That metaphor has been understood to demand that religion be treated far better than other concerns in some contexts, and far worse in others. Sometimes it seems to insist on both contrary forms of treatment simultaneously. Missing has been concern for the fair and equal treatment of religion. In response, the authors offer an understanding of religious freedom called Equal Liberty. Equal Liberty is guided by two principles. First, no one within the reach of the Constitution ought to be devalued on account of the spiritual foundation of their commitments. Second, all persons should enjoy broad rights of free speech, personal autonomy, associative freedom, and private property. Together, these principles are generous and fair to a wide range of religious beliefs and practices. With Equal Liberty as their guide, the authors offer practical, moderate, and appealing terms for the settlement of many hot-button issues that have plunged religious freedom into controversy. Their book calls Americans back to the project of finding fair terms of cooperation for a religiously diverse people, and it offers a valuable set of tools for working toward that end.
Author: Christopher L. Eisgruber Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674034457 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 346
Book Description
Religion has become a charged token in a politics of division. In disputes about faith-based social services, public money for religious schools, the Pledge of Allegiance, Ten Commandments monuments, the theory of evolution, and many other topics, angry contestation threatens to displace America's historic commitment to religious freedom. Part of the problem, the authors argue, is that constitutional analysis of religious freedom has been hobbled by the idea of "a wall of separation" between church and state. That metaphor has been understood to demand that religion be treated far better than other concerns in some contexts, and far worse in others. Sometimes it seems to insist on both contrary forms of treatment simultaneously. Missing has been concern for the fair and equal treatment of religion. In response, the authors offer an understanding of religious freedom called Equal Liberty. Equal Liberty is guided by two principles. First, no one within the reach of the Constitution ought to be devalued on account of the spiritual foundation of their commitments. Second, all persons should enjoy broad rights of free speech, personal autonomy, associative freedom, and private property. Together, these principles are generous and fair to a wide range of religious beliefs and practices. With Equal Liberty as their guide, the authors offer practical, moderate, and appealing terms for the settlement of many hot-button issues that have plunged religious freedom into controversy. Their book calls Americans back to the project of finding fair terms of cooperation for a religiously diverse people, and it offers a valuable set of tools for working toward that end.
Author: Paul Horwitz Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 019973772X Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 351
Book Description
"Argues that the fundamental reason for church-state conflict is our aversion to questions of religious truth. By trying to avoid the question of religious truth, law and religion has ultimately reached a state of incoherence. He asserts that the answer to this dilemma is to take the agnostic turn: to take an empathetic and imaginative approach to questions of religious truth, one that actually confronts rather than avoids these questions, but without reaching a final judgment about what that truth is"--Jacket.
Author: Kent Greenawalt Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400827523 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 470
Book Description
Balancing respect for religious conviction and the values of liberal democracy is a daunting challenge for judges and lawmakers, particularly when religious groups seek exemption from laws that govern others. Should members of religious sects be able to use peyote in worship? Should pacifists be forced to take part in military service when there is a draft, and should this depend on whether they are religious? How can the law address the refusal of parents to provide medical care to their children--or the refusal of doctors to perform abortions? Religion and the Constitution presents a new framework for addressing these and other controversial questions that involve competing demands of fairness, liberty, and constitutional validity. In the first of two major volumes on the intersection of constitutional and religious issues in the United States, Kent Greenawalt focuses on one of the Constitution's main clauses concerning religion: the Free Exercise Clause. Beginning with a brief account of the clause's origin and a short history of the Supreme Court's leading decisions about freedom of religion, he devotes a chapter to each of the main controversies encountered by judges and lawmakers. Sensitive to each case's context in judging whether special treatment of religious claims is justified, Greenawalt argues that the state's treatment of religion cannot be reduced to a single formula. Calling throughout for religion to be taken more seriously as a force for meaning in people's lives, Religion and the Constitution aims to accommodate the maximum expression of religious conviction that is consistent with a commitment to fairness and the public welfare.
Author: Geoffrey R. Stone Publisher: Liveright Publishing ISBN: 1631493655 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 935
Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A “volume of lasting significance” that illuminates how the clash between sex and religion has defined our nation’s history (Lee C. Bollinger, president, Columbia University). Lauded for “bringing a bracing and much-needed dose of reality about the Founders’ views of sexuality” (New York Review of Books), Geoffrey R. Stone’s Sex and the Constitution traces the evolution of legal and moral codes that have legislated sexual behavior from America’s earliest days to today’s fractious political climate. This “fascinating and maddening” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) narrative shows how agitators, moralists, and, especially, the justices of the Supreme Court have navigated issues as divisive as abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and contraception. Overturning a raft of contemporary shibboleths, Stone reveals that at the time the Constitution was adopted there were no laws against obscenity or abortion before the midpoint of pregnancy. A pageant of historical characters, including Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, Anthony Comstock, Margaret Sanger, and Justice Anthony Kennedy, enliven this “commanding synthesis of scholarship” (Publishers Weekly) that dramatically reveals how our laws about sex, religion, and morality reflect the cultural schisms that have cleaved our nation from its founding.
Author: David Barton Publisher: Wallbuilder Press ISBN: 9781932225266 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 548
Book Description
In their own words, the Supreme Court has become "a national theology board," "a super board of education," and amateur psychologists on a "psycho-journey." The result has been a virtual rewriting of the liberties enumerated in the Constitution. A direct victim of this judicial micromanagement has been the religious aspect of the First Amendment. For example, the Court now interprets that Amendment under: a "Lemon Test" absurdly requiring religious expression to be secular, an "Endorsement Test" pursuing an impossible neutrality between religion and secularism, and a "Psychological Coercion Test" allowing a single dissenter to silence an entire community's religious expression. Additional casualties of judicial activism have included protections for State's rights, local controls, separation of powers, legislative supremacy, and numerous other constitutional provisions. Why did earlier Courts protect these powers for generations, and what has caused their erosion by contemporary Courts? Original Intent answers these questions. By relying on thousands of primary sources, Original Intent documents (in the Founding Fathers' own words) not only the plan for limited government originally set forth in the Constitution and Bill of Rights but how that vision can once again become reality. Book jacket.
Author: Kent Greenawalt Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 9780691125831 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 576
Book Description
Calling throughout for religion to be taken more seriously as a force for meaning in peoplee lives, Religion and the Constitution aims to accommodate the maximum expression of religious conviction that is consistent with a commitment to fairness and the public welfare. Includes information on abortion, atheism, atheists, Bear v. Reformed Mennonite Church, Harry Blackmun, William Brennan, Catholicism, Catholics, child custody, Christianity, Christians, conscientious objection to military service, discrimination, Employment Division v. Smith, Establishment Clause, religious exemptions, Fourteenth Amendment, Free Exercise Clause, Free Speech Clause, harassment by employers, Hinduism, Hindus, Islam, Muslims, Jehovahh Witnesses, Judaism, Jews, Lyng v. Northwestern Indian Cemetery Protective Association, Native American Church, Sandra Day OOonnor, Protestantism, Protestants, religion, religious beliefs, Sherbert v. Verner, Sunday closing laws, Wisconsin v. Yoder, zoning, Zummo v. Zummo, etc.
Author: Ellis M. West Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3030060527 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 317
Book Description
This book explains the original meaning of the two religion clauses of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law [1] respecting an establishment of religion or [2] prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” As the book shows, both clauses were intended to protect the free exercise of religion or religious freedom. West shows the position taken by early Americans on four issues: (1) the general meaning of the “free exercise of religion,” including whether it is different from the meaning of “no establishment of religion”; (2) whether the free exercise of religion may be intentionally and directly limited, and if so, under what circumstances; (3) whether laws regulating temporal matters that also have a religious sanction violate the free exercise of religion; and (4) whether the free exercise of religion gives persons a right to be exempt from obeying valid civil laws that unintentionally and indirectly make it difficult or impossible to practice their religion in some way. A definitive work on the subject and a major contribution to the field of constitutional law and history, this volume is key to a better understanding of the ongoing constitutional adjudication based on the religion clauses of the First Amendment.
Author: Michael I. Meyerson Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300183496 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 477
Book Description
The debate over the framers' concept of freedom of religion has become heated and divisive. This scrupulously researched book sets aside the half-truths, omissions, and partisan arguments, and instead focuses on the actual writings and actions of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and others. Legal scholar Michael I. Meyerson investigates how the framers of the Constitution envisioned religious freedom and how they intended it to operate in the new republic. Endowed by Our Creator shows that the framers understood that the American government should not acknowledge religion in a way that favors any particular creed or denomination. Nevertheless, the framers believed that religion could instill virtue and help to unify a diverse nation. They created a spiritual public vocabulary, one that could communicate to all—including agnostics and atheists—that they were valued members of the political community. Through their writings and their decisions, the framers affirmed that respect for religious differences is a fundamental American value, Meyerson concludes. Now it is for us to determine whether religion will be used to alienate and divide or to inspire and unify our religiously diverse nation.
Author: Christopher L. Eisgruber
Author: Christopher L. Eisgruber
Author: Paul Horwitz
Author: 
Author: Kent Greenawalt
Author: Kent Greenawalt
Author: Geoffrey R. Stone
Author: David Barton
Author: Kent Greenawalt
Author: Ellis M. West
Author: Michael I. Meyerson