Religious Liberty in Crisis

Religious Liberty in Crisis PDF Author: Ken Starr
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 164177181X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
What was unfathomable in the first two decades of the twenty-first century has become a reality. Religious liberty, both in the United States and across the world, is in crisis. As we navigate the coming decades, We the People must know our rights more than ever, particularly as it relates to the freedom to exercise our religion. Armed with a proper understanding of this country’s rich tradition of religious liberty, we can protect faith through any crisis that comes our way. Without that understanding, though, we’ll watch as the creeping secular age erodes our freedom. In this book, Ken Starr explores the crises that threaten religious liberty in America. He also examines the ways well-meaning government action sometimes undermines the religious liberty of the people, and how the Supreme Court in the past has ultimately provided us protection from such forms of government overreach. He also explores the possibilities of future overreach by government officials. The reader will learn how each of us can resist the quarantining of our faith within the confines of the law, and why that resistance is important. Through gaining a deep understanding of the Constitutional importance of religious expression, Starr invites the reader to be a part of protecting those rights of religious freedom and taking a more active role in advancing the cause of liberty.

Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination

Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination PDF Author: John Corvino
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190603070
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
This book explores emerging conflicts about religious liberty and discrimination. In point-counterpoint format, it brings together longtime LGBT rights advocate John Corvino and rising conservative thinkers Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis to debate Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs), anti-discrimination law, and age-old questions about identity, morality, and society.

Free to Believe

Free to Believe PDF Author: Luke Goodrich
Publisher: Multnomah
ISBN: 0525652906
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
A leading religious freedom attorney, the veteran of several Supreme Court battles, helps people of faith understand religious liberty in our rapidly changing culture—why it matters, how it is threatened, and how to respond with confidence and grace. WINNER OF THE CHRISTIAN BOOK AWARD® • THE GOSPEL COALITION'S BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR, PUBLIC THEOLOGY & CURRENT EVENTS • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY WORLD MAGAZINE Many Americans feel like their religious freedom is under attack. They see the culture changing around them, and they fear that their beliefs will soon be punished as a form of bigotry. Others think these fears are overblown and say Christians should stop complaining about imaginary persecution. In Free to Believe leading religious freedom attorney Luke Goodrich challenges both sides of this debate, offering a fresh perspective on the most controversial religious freedom conflicts today. With penetrating insights on gay rights, abortion rights, Islam, and the public square, Goodrich argues that threats to religious freedom are real—but they might not be quite what you think. As a lawyer at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Goodrich has won several historic Supreme Court victories for clients such as the Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby. Combining frontline experience with faithful attention to Scripture, Goodrich shows why religious freedom matters, how it is threatened, and how to protect it. The result is a groundbreaking book full of clear insight, practical wisdom, and refreshing hope for all people of faith.

James Madison on Religious Liberty

James Madison on Religious Liberty PDF Author: Robert S. Alley
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615926933
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
This long-overdue volume is the only one of its kind containing all of Madison's religious writings, as well as new contributions by leading scholars. Madison's writings assume even more importance to thoughtful Americans as the Supreme Court continues to decide issues of school prayer, and as the Moral Majority tries to desecularize American public and private life. Imagine an America without the Bill of Rights, without the Constitution. This image of our nation, existing without these two foundations of freedom, justice, and inquiry, assaults the imagination, for these two documents are the fuel that runs the republic. What is even more remarkable is that their primary author was one man - James Madison. James Madison On Religious Liberty is the definitive work of scholarship in its field, and will lay to rest any questioning of Madison's enormous historical stature. The essays are exhaustive in scope - many appear here for the first time in published form - and they include all of the available scholarship on Madison's religious writings. Alley provides more than 65 pages of source material, including "Memorial and Remonstrance," probably the single most important statement of religious liberty ever written; the Virginia Declaration of Rights; selections from his correspondence with Thomas Jefferson and William Bradford; and other writings. Among the distinguished contributors are Daniel J. Boorstein, the late Sam Ervin, Jr., Robert A. Rutland, A.E. Dick Howard, Henry Steele Commager, Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., and Dumas Malone. This volume makes clear the wisdom and courage Madison invested in his writings. He was fully aware that all our freedoms flow from religious liberty, as religious liberty is really the freedom of inquiry.

Faking Liberties

Faking Liberties PDF Author: Jolyon Baraka Thomas
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022661882X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 371

Book Description
Religious freedom is a founding tenet of the United States, and it has frequently been used to justify policies towards other nations. Such was the case in 1945 when Americans occupied Japan following World War II. Though the Japanese constitution had guaranteed freedom of religion since 1889, the United States declared that protection faulty, and when the occupation ended in 1952, they claimed to have successfully replaced it with “real” religious freedom. Through a fresh analysis of pre-war Japanese law, Jolyon Baraka Thomas demonstrates that the occupiers’ triumphant narrative obscured salient Japanese political debates about religious freedom. Indeed, Thomas reveals that American occupiers also vehemently disagreed about the topic. By reconstructing these vibrant debates, Faking Liberties unsettles any notion of American authorship and imposition of religious freedom. Instead, Thomas shows that, during the Occupation, a dialogue about freedom of religion ensued that constructed a new global set of political norms that continue to form policies today.

Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court

Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court PDF Author: Vincent Phillip Munoz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442250321
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 679

Book Description
Throughout American history, legal battles concerning the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty have been among the most contentious issue of the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents represents the most authoritative and up-to-date overview of the landmark cases that have defined religious freedom in America. Noted religious liberty expert Vincent Philip Munoz (Notre Dame) provides carefully edited excerpts from over fifty of the most important Supreme Court religious liberty cases. In addition, Munoz’s substantive introduction offers an overview on the constitutional history of religious liberty in America. Introductory headnotes to each case provides the constitutional and historical context. Religious Liberty and the American Constitution is an indispensable resource for anyone interested matters of religious freedom from the Republic’s earliest days to current debates.

Deep Commitments

Deep Commitments PDF Author: Trevor Burrus
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1944424822
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description
Throughout our history, Americans have been a highly religious people. Indeed, many of the original colonists came to the New World specifically to escape religious persecution. And though somewhat less devout than we once were, the United States still leads the developed world in religiosity. Today, however, many feel that religious freedom is under serious—perhaps unprecedented—threat. With everything from health-insurance mandates, to the censoring of high school graduation speeches, to punishing vendors who refuse to work gay weddings, religious liberty seems to be increasingly curbed by powerful and intrusive government. What should we do when a law or government action, often not intended to inhibit religious exercise, nevertheless does? How much of a connection between church and state is “too much,” such that it infringes on the rights of nonbelievers? How can we maximize harmony between religious and nonreligious Americans? In June 2016, the Cato Institute’s Protecting Religious Liberties conference sought to answer those questions. The conference speakers addressed the history and philosophy of religious freedom, religious freedom and education, and current controversies over religious freedom and public accommodations. This volume contains essays adapted from presentations and discussions at the conference, as well as new introductory and concluding essays.

Transforming Religious Liberties

Transforming Religious Liberties PDF Author: S. I. Strong
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107179335
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Book Description
Proposes a new theoretical approach to religious liberty that both transcends and transforms current approaches to law and religion.

Religious Freedom and the Constitution

Religious Freedom and the Constitution PDF 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.

Faith and Freedom

Faith and Freedom PDF Author: Marvin E. Frankel
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0809015757
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 146

Book Description
Frankel examines some of the religious liberty cases in the last half century, including the use of peyote, exempting Amish children from school, and the prosecution of religous fraud.