In the United States and Europe, an increasing emphasis on equality has pitted rights claims against each other, raising profound philosophical, moral, legal, and political questions about the meaning and reach of religious liberty. Nowhere has this conflict been more salient than in the debate between claims of religious freedom, on one hand, and equal rights claims made on the behalf of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, on the other. As new rights for LGBT individuals have expanded in liberal democracies across the West, longstanding rights of religious freedom - such as the rights of religious communities to adhere to their fundamental teachings, including protecting the rights of conscience; the rights of parents to impart their religious beliefs to their children; and the liberty to advance religiously-based moral arguments as a rationale for laws - have suffered a corresponding decline. Timothy Samuel Shah, Thomas F. Farr, and Jack Friedman's volume, Religious Freedom and Gay Rights brings together some of the world's leading thinkers on religion, morality, politics, and law to analyze the emerging tensions between religious freedom and gay rights in three key geographic regions: the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe. What implications will expanding regimes of equality rights for LGBT individuals have on religious freedom in these regions? What are the legal and moral frameworks that govern tensions between gay rights and religious freedom? How are these tensions illustrated in particular legal, political, and policy controversies? And what is the proper way to balance new claims of equality against existing claims for freedom of religious groups and individuals? Religious Freedom and Gay Rights offers several explorations of these questions.

This book provides a critical history of the distinctive tradition of Indian secularism known as Tolerance. Since it was first advanced by Mohandas Gandhi, the Tolerance ideal has measured secularism and civil religiosity by contrast with proselytizing religion. In India today, it informs debates over how the right to religious freedom should be interpreted on the subcontinent. Not only has Tolerance been an important political ideal in India since the early twentieth century; the framing assumptions of Tolerance permeate historical understandings among scholars of South Asian religion and politics. In conventional accounts, the emergence of Tolerance during the 1920s is described as a victory of Indian secularism over the intolerant practice of shuddhi "proselytizing", pursued by reformist Hindus of the Arya Samaj, that was threatening harmonious Hindu-Muslim relations. This study shows that the designation of shuddhi as religious proselytizing was not fixed; it was the product of decades of political struggle. The book traces the conditions for the emergence of Tolerance, and the circumstances of its first deployment, by examining the history of debates surrounding Arya Samaj activities in north India between 1880 and 1930. It asks what political considerations governed Indian actors' efforts to represent shuddhi as religious on different occasions; and it asks what was lost in translation when they did. It reveals that by framing shuddhi decisively as a religious matter, Tolerance functioned to disengage Indian secularism from the politics of caste.

Each state in Europe has its own national laws which affect religion and these are increasingly the subject of political and academic debate. This book provides a detailed comparative introduction to these laws with particular reference to the states of the European Union. A comparison of national laws on religion reveals profound similarities between them. From these emerge principles of law on religion common to the states of Europe and the book articulates these for the first time. It examines the constitutional postures of states towards religion, religious freedom, and discrimination, and the legal position, autonomy, and ministers of religious organizations. It also examines the protection of doctrine and worship, the property and finances of religion, religion, education, and public institutions, and religion, marriage, and children, as well as the fundamentals of the emergent European Union law on religion.
The existence of these principles challenges the standard view in modern scholarship that there is little commonality in the legal postures of European states towards religion - it reveals that the dominant juridical model in Europe is that of cooperation between State and religion. The book also analyses national laws in the context of international laws on religion, particularly the European Convention on Human Rights. It proposes that national laws go further than these in their treatment and protection of religion, and that the principles of religion law common to the states of Europe may themselves represent a blueprint for the development of international norms in this field. The book provides a wealth of legal materials for scholars and students. The principles articulated in it also enable greater dialogue between law and disciplines beyond law, such as the sociology of religion, about the role of religion in Europe today. The book also identifies areas for further research in this regard, pointing the direction for future study.

"After saying our good-byes to friends and neighbors, we all got in the cars and headed up the hill and down the road toward a future in Ohio that we hoped would be brighter," Otis Trotter writes in his affecting memoir, Keeping Heart: A Memoir of Family Struggle, Race, and Medicine. Organized around the life histories, medical struggles, and recollections of Trotter and his thirteen siblings, the story begins in 1914 with his parents, Joe William Trotter Sr. and Thelma Odell Foster Trotter, in rural Alabama. By telling his story alongside the experiences of his parents as well as his siblings, Otis reveals cohesion and tensions in twentieth-century African American family and community life in Alabama, West Virginia, and Ohio. This engaging chronicle illuminates the journeys not only of a black man born with heart disease in the southern Appalachian coalfields, but of his family and community. It fills an important gap in the literature on an underexamined aspect of American experience: the lives of blacks in rural Appalachia and in the nonurban endpoints of the Great Migration. Its emotional power is a testament to the importance of ordinary lives.

The Tower of Babel narrative is one of the most memorable accounts of the Bible, and its interpretative potential has produced a vast array of literary adaptations. Undoing Babel is the first extensive examination of the development of the Babel narrative amongst Anglo-Saxon authors from late antiquity to the eleventh century. Tristan Major's illuminating and original insight into Anglo-Latin and Old English works, including the writings of Aldhelm, Bede, Alcuin, Aelfric, and Wulfstan, reveals the cultural ideologies and anxieties that transformed the Babel narrative. In doing so, Major argues that these Babel narratives provide a basis for understanding the world's ethnic and linguistic diversity as well as a theological stimulus to evangelize non-Christian and non-European people. Undoing Babel highlights the depth of literary innovation in this period and disproves any notion of a single Anglo-Saxon reception of biblical sources.

In the summer of 2006, the author received a message that read, Love the Nazis, and KILL THE JEWS DEAD. And that was the trigger that launched internationally known scholar Falk into work on this book. Anti-Semitism has once again become a worldwide phenomenon, growing largely during the last decade of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st. Among the spurs for this are the migration of Muslim populations and the ongoing Israeli-Arab wars. In this far-reaching and comprehensive volume, Falk delves deeply into the current events, history, and literature on anti-Semitism, integrating insights from psychology, sociology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and political science. The result is an absorbing exploration of one of the oldest scourges of humanity, spotlighting the irrational and unconscious causes of anti-Semitism. In the summer of 2006, the author received a message that read, Love the Nazis, and KILL THE JEWS DEAD. And that was the trigger that launched internationally known scholar Avner Falk into work on this book. Anti-Semitism has once again become a worldwide phenomenon, growing largely during the last decade of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first. Among the spurs for this are migration of Muslim populations and the ongoing Israeli-Arab wars. In this far-reaching and comprehensive volume, Falk delves deeply into the current events, history and literature on anti-Semitism, integrating insights from psychology, sociology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and political science. The result is an absorbing exploration of one of the oldest scourges of humanity, spotlighting the irrational and unconscious causes of anti-Semitism. This book also features chapters on the psychodynamics of racism, fascism, Nazism, and the dark, tragic, and unconscious processes, both individual and collective, that led to the Shoah. Holocaust denial and its psychological motives, as well as insights into the physical and psychological survival strategies of Holocaust survivors, are explored in depth. There are also chapters on scientific anti-Semitism including eugenics.

Voices of Freedom: The Middle East and North Africa showcases essays from activists, journalists, novelists, and scholars whose areas of expertise include free speech, peace and reconciliation, alterity-otherness, and Middle Eastern and North African religions and literatures. Co-edited by TCU colleagues Rima Abunasser and Mark Dennis, the volume is meant to serve as a vehicle for giving dignity and depth to the peoples of these regions by celebrating courageous voices of freedom trying to respond to fundamental, often devastating, changes on the ground, including the Arab Spring, the Syrian refugee crisis, and the rise of the Islamic State. Writing in both the first- and third-person, essayists offer deeply moving portraits of voices that cry out for freedom in chaotic, and often violent, circumstances. Voices of Freedom is aimed at college classes that address the many ways in which freedom intersects with politics, religion, and other elements in the societies of these dynamic and diverse regions. It will serve as a valuable primary source for college teachers interested in exploring with their students the struggle for freedom in non-Western and transnational cultural contexts. The volume is also meant to attract other audiences, including readers from the general public interested in learning about inspirational people from parts of the world about which Americans and other English-speaking peoples are generally unfamiliar.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.

"Choice Magazine" Outstanding Academic Titles 2005 Winner

"[William's] theory is elegant in its explication and provocative in its implications for government restrictions on speech ranging from the hateful, the symbolic, the politically subversive, and the costly. A must read."--"Choice," A 2005 "Choice" Outstanding Academic Title

"Meticulously argued and clearly organized, her account of free speech is both fundamentally feminist and optimistic."--"The Law and Politics Book Review"

"What emerges from this well-written work of careful scholarship is an important contribution to free speech literature."
--Frederick Schauer, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Amidst the vast array of literature on the First Amendment, it is rare to hear a fresh voice speak about the First Amendment, but in Truth, Autonomy, and Speech, Susan H. Williams presents a strikingly original interpretation and defense of the First Amendment, written from a feminist perspective. Drawing on work from several disciplines--including law, political theory, philosophy, and anthropology--the book develops alternative accounts of truth and autonomy as the foundations for freedom of expression. Building on feminist understandings of self and the social world, Williams argues that both truth and autonomy are fundamentally relational.

With great clarity and insight, Williams demonstrates that speech is the means by which we create rather than discover truth and the primary mechanism through which we tell the stories that constitute our autonomy. She examines several controversial issues in the law of free speech--includingcampaign finance reform, the public forum doctrine, and symbolic speech--and concludes that the legal doctrine through which we interpret and apply the First Amendment should be organized to protect speech that serves the purposes of truth and autonomy.

African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights examines the emerging trend of requests for expert opinions in asylum hearings or refugee status determinations. This is the first book to explore the role of court-based expertise in relation to African asylum cases and the first to establish a rigorous analytical framework for interpreting the effects of this new reliance on expert testimony. Over the past two decades, courts in Western countries and beyond have begun demanding expert reports tailored to the experience of the individual claimant. As courts increasingly draw upon such testimony in their deliberations, expertise in matters of asylum and refugee status is emerging as an academic area with its own standards, protocols, and guidelines. This deeply thoughtful book explores these developments and their effects on both asylum seekers and the experts whose influence may determine their fate. Contributors: Iris Berger, Carol Bohmer, John Campbell, Katherine Luongo, E. Ann McDougall, Karen Musalo, Tricia Redeker Hepner, Amy Shuman, Joanna T. Tague, Meredith Terretta, and Charlotte Walker-Said.

Minority Religions under Irish Law focuses the spotlight specifically on the legal protections afforded in Ireland to minority religions, generally, and to the Muslim community, in particular. Although predominantly focused on the Irish context, the book also boasts contributions from leading international academics, considering questions of broader global importance such as how to create an inclusive environment for minority religions and how to regulate religious tribunals best. Reflecting on issues as diverse as the right to education, marriage recognition, Islamic finance and employment equality, Minority Religions under Irish Law provides a comprehensive and fresh look at the legal space occupied by many rapidly growing minority religions in Ireland, with a special focus on the Muslim community.

The transformation of the Turkish state is examined here in the context of globalized frames of neo-liberal capitalism and contemporary schemas of Islamic politics. It shows how the historical emergence of two distinct yet intertwined imaginaries of state structuring, "laiklik" and Islam, continues to influence Turkish politics today.

Rejecting the extreme arguments of today's debates, the author examines what the framers of the Constitution actually said about religious freedom 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. Now it is for us, Meyerson concludes, to determine whether religion will be used to alienate and divide or to inspire and unify our religiously diverse nation.

In the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement, leading planers and social scientists examine public space today and freedom of assembly. The Occupy Wall Street movement has challenged the physical manifestation of the First Amendment rights to freedom of assembly. Where and how can people congregate today? Forty social scientists, planners, architects, and civil liberties experts explore the definition, use, role, and importance of public space for the exercise of our democratic rights to free expression. The book also discusses whose voice is heard and what factors limit the participation of minorities in Occupy activities. This foundational work puts issues of democracy and civic engagement back into the center of dialogue about the built environment. Beyond Zuccotti Park is a collaborative effort of Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, City College of New York School of Architecture, New Village Press and its parent organization, Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility. The book is part of an open civic inquiry on the part of these organizations. The project was seeded by a series of free public forums, Freedom of Assembly: Public Space Today, held at the Center for Architecture in response to the forced clearance of Occupy activities from Zuccotti Park and public plazas throughout the country. The first two recorded programs took place on December 17, 2011 and February 4, 2012.

Mindy Thompson Fullilove presents ways to strengthen neighborhood connectivity and empower marginalized communities through investigation of urban segregation from a social heath perspective. "Fullilove passionately demonstrates how, through an urbanity of inclusion, we can heal our fractured cities to make them whole again. What if divided neighborhoods were causing public health problems? What if a new approach to planning and design could tackle both the built environment and collective well-being at the same time? What if cities could help each other? Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, the acclaimed author of Root Shock, uses her unique perspective as a public health psychiatrist to explore and identify ways of healing social and spatial fractures simultaneously. Using the work of French urbanist Michel Cantal-Dupart and the American urban design firm Rothschild Doyno Collaborative as guides as well as urban restoration projects from France and the US as exemplary cases, Fullilove identifies nine tools that can mend our broken cities and reconnect our communities to make them whole.

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 will be an indispensable resource for anyone interested matters of religious freedom from the Republics earliest days to current debates.

The collapse of socialist regimes across Southeastern Europe changed the rules of the political game and led to the transformation of these societies. The status of women was immediately affected. The contributors to this volume contrast the status of women in the post-socialist societies of the region with their status under socialism.

Although human rights belong to all persons on the basis of their humanity, this book demonstrates that in the practice of international human rights law, the freedom to be non-religious or atheist does not receive the same protection as the freedom to be religious. Despite the claimed universality of freedom of religion and belief contained in article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the key assertion made is that there is a hierarchy of religion and belief, with followers of major established religions enjoying high protection and low regulation at the top, and atheists and non-believers enduring high persecution and weaker protection at the bottom. The existence of this hierarchy is proven and critiqued through three case study chapters that respectively explore the extent to which non-religious and atheist rights-holders enjoy freedom from proselytism, freedom from hate and freedom from the religions of their parents.

The Falungong movement originated in 1992 as a system of breathing exercises designed to promote health and well-being. Riding on the coattails of the qigong fever that swept through China, it attracted an extensive following until 1994, when the Chinese government suppressed the qigong movement. A series of protest rallies by Falungong organizations against local government repression set in motion an upward conflict spiral that culminated in the siege of the Party headquarters in Beijing on April 25, 1999, by more than 20,000 Falungong practitioners. Revenge of the Forbidden City begins with the shock of the Politburo against such insolent defiance, resolving to retaliate against the Falungong, a retaliation that represented "the most serious political incident" since the Tiananmen upheaval in 1989.
James W. Tong reveals how the Chinese government's relentless, sustained repression of the Falungong movement typifies its response towards perceived internal threats. Though many claim that the Democratic reforms in China have eroded the government's ability to monitor and control its citizens, the success of the campaign to eradicate Falungong indicates otherwise: the government effectively implemented a multifaceted offensive involving unsparing suppression, pervasive propaganda, and coercive conversion. The successful execution of this complex campaign reveals the resilience of China's authoritarian institutions. Using empirical evidence and thorough analysis, Tong reveals the Chinese state's formidable ability to crush dissent and provides a cogent rebuttal to those who claim that the Communist government is on the verge of collapse. The definitive account of China's response to Falungong, Revenge of the Forbidden City is essential for any scholar interested in how the Chinese state actually operates.

According to new research from the Public Religion Research Institute, there are over 35 million consistently progressive Christians in the United States. Majorities of American Christians support reproductive justice and LGBTQ+ rights. Yet they're erased from our public narrative--only mentioned as outliers to the fundamentalist norm. In Just Faith, progressive Christian activist and writer Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons explains how a strong religious left has accompanied every major progressive advance in our society, and he resurrects the long but forgotten history of progressive Christianity in the United States that can and must link arms with progressive Muslims and Jews to make the moral case for pluralism, human dignity, and the common good. Graves-Fitzsimmons provides a blueprint for this type of resurrection based on his advocacy work at the intersection of religion and American politics. Graves-Fitzsimmons creates a rallying cry for a bold progressive Christianity that unapologetically fights for its values to impact the biggest political battles of our time--from immigration and economic fairness to LGBTQ+ rights and abortion rights- so that progressive Christians will stop lowering their voices when they identify as Christians. "What kind of Christian are you?" they'll be asked. And they'll even be understood when they reply with a smile, "The good kind."

From the murderous reaction to the publication in a French satirical magazine of 'blasphemous' cartoons, to wrangles over the wearing of religious dress and symbols in schools and workplaces, the interaction between law and religion is rarely far from the headlines. Indeed, the editors of this Routledge collection argue that, since the events of 11 September 2001, the short- and long-term implications of multiculturalism, religious resurgence, and extremism have dominated public life both globally and domestically. Consequently, they say, the legal framework concerning the regulation of religion has changed dramatically over the last decade or so. There have been numerous developments at the global, regional, state, and sub-state level, and these changes have been accompanied by an unprecedented number of high-profile cases affecting religious individuals and groups. Now, this new collection from Routledge's Critical Concepts in Law series, edited by two prolific authors based at the world-leading Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff University, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to help researchers and students navigate and make better sense of an abundance of scholarship. With a full index, and thoughtful introductions, newly written by the learned editors, Law and Religion traces the field's development and highlights the challenges for future explorations. The collection will be valued by legal and religious scholars as a vital and enduring resource.

The question of to what extent, manifestations of religious beliefs should be permitted in the European public sphere has become a salient and controversial topic in recent years. Despite the increasing interest however, debates have rarely questioned the conventional wisdom that an increase in the range of security measures employed by a government inevitably leads to a decrease in the human rights enjoyed by individuals.

This book analyses the relationship between state security regime changes and the right to religious freedom in the EU. It presents a comparative analysis of the impact these regime changes have had on the politics, policies and protections of religious freedom across the EU member states in the post-2001 environment. The book provides a timely investigation into the role of national legislation, the European Court of Human Rights, and societal trends in the protection of religious freedom, and in so doing demonstrates why the relationship between state security and religious freedom is one of the most socially significant challenges facing policymakers and jurists in Europe at the present time.

In Freedom of Religion and Its Regulation in Nigeria: Analysis of Preaching Board Laws in Some States of Northern Nigeria, Ahmed Salisu Garba provides an account of how states in Northern Nigeria have enacted laws to regulate religious preaching in the spheres of influence. The work examines the debates surrounding the laws and how the state in collaboration with dominant religious groups persecuted members of minority religious in the states. The author applied an argumentative approach to raise and analyse issues relating to the reasonability of the laws in Nigeria, reasons for their enactment, judicial review mechanisms employed in the determination of the reasonability of the laws in democracies, and how they accord with the freedom of religion clause in the Nigerian Constitution.

Religious terrorism poses a significant challenge for many countries around the world. Extremists who justify violence in God's name can be found in every religious tradition, and attacks perpetrated by faith-based militants have increased dramatically over the past three decades. Given the reality of religious terrorism today, it would seem counterintuitive that the best weapon against violent religious extremism would be for countries and societies to allow for the free practice of religion; yet this is precisely what this book argues. Weapon of Peace investigates the link between terrorism and the repression of religion, both from a historical perspective and against contemporary developments in the Middle East and elsewhere. Drawing upon a range of different case studies and quantitative data, Saiya makes the case that the suppression and not the expression of religion leads to violence and extremism, and that safeguarding religious freedom is both a moral and strategic imperative.

Read Chapter One.

Frederick Douglass and George Fitzhugh disagreed on virtually every major issue of the day. On slavery, women's rights, and the preservation of the Union their opinions were diametrically opposed. Where Douglass thundered against the evils of slavery, Fitzhugh counted its many alleged blessings in ways that would make modern readers cringe. What then could the leading abolitionist of the day and the most prominent southern proslavery intellectual possibly have in common? According to David F. Ericson, the answer is as surprising as it is simple; liberalism.

In The Debate Over Slavery David F. Ericson makes the controversial argument that despite their many ostensible differences, most Northern abolitionists and Southern defenders of slavery shared many common commitments: to liberal principles; to the nation; to the nation's special mission in history; and to secular progress. He analyzes, side-by-side, pro and antislavery thinkers such as Lydia Marie Child, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, Thomas R. Dew, and James Fitzhugh to demonstrate the links between their very different ideas and to show how, operating from liberal principles, they came to such radically different conclusions. His raises disturbing questions about liberalism that historians, philosophers, and political scientists cannot afford to ignore.