Faith-based organizations play a major role in providing a host of health, educational, and social services to the public. Nearly all these efforts, however, have been accompanied by intense debate and numerous legal challenges. The right of faith-based organizations to hire based on religion, the presence of religious symbols and icons in rooms where government-subsidized services are provided, and the enforcement of gay civil rights to which some faith-based organizations object all continue to be subjects of intense debate and numerous court cases. In Pluralism and Freedom, Stephen Monsma explores the question of how much autonomy should faith-based organizations retain when they enter the public realm? He contends that pluralism and freedom demand their religious freedom be respected, but that freedom of all religious traditions and of the general public and secular groups be equally respected, ideals that neither the left nor the right live up to. In response, Monsma argues that democratic pluralism requires a genuine, authentic-but also a limited-autonomy for faith-based organizations providing public services, and offers practical, concrete public policy applications of this framework in practice.

Free to Believe investigates the protection for freedom of conscience and religion - the first of the "fundamental freedoms" listed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - and its interpretation in the courts. Through an examination of decided cases that touches on the most controversial issues of our day, such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and minority religious practices, Mary Anne Waldron examines how the law has developed in the way that it has, the role that freedom of conscience and religion play in our society, and the role it could play in making it a more open, peaceful, and democratic place. While the range of cases explored will be of interest to scholars, Free to Believe is also written in an accessible style, with legal terms and concepts explained for those who wish to learn accurate, detailed information about the impact of the law on contemporary social policy issues. As such, this book widens the debate about this fundamental freedom and the influence of public opinion on what is often a misrepresented and misunderstood issue.

The Canadian principle of reasonable accommodation demands that the cultural majority make certain concessions to the needs of minority groups if these concessions will not cause 'undue hardship.' This principle has caused much debate in Quebec, particularly over issues of language, Muslim head coverings, and religious symbols such as the kirpan (traditional Sikh dagger). In 2007, Quebec Premier Jean Charest commissioned historian and sociologist G?rard Bouchard and philosopher and political scientist Charles Taylor to co-chair a commission that would investigate the limits of reasonable accommodation in that province.Religion, Culture, and the State addresses reasonable accommodation from legal, political, and anthropological perspectives. Using the 2008 Bouchard-Taylor Report as their point of departure, the contributors contextualize the English and French Canadian experiences of multiculturalism and diversity through socio-historical analysis, political philosophy, and practical comparisons to other jurisdictions. Timely and engaging, Religion, Culture, and the State is a valuable resource in the discussion of religious pluralism in Canadian society.

This book is an interdisciplinary guide to the religion clauses of the First Amendment with a focus on its philosophical foundations, historical developments, and legal and political implications. The volume begins with fundamental questions about God, the nature of belief and worship, conscience, freedom, and their intersections with law. It then traces the history of religious liberty and church-state relations in America through a diverse set of religious and non-religious voices from the seventeenth century to the most recent Supreme Court decisions. The Companion will conclude by addressing legal and political questions concerning the First Amendment and the court cases and controversies surrounding religious liberty today, including the separation of church and state, corporate religious liberty, and constitutional interpretation. This scholarly yet accessible book will introduce students and scholars alike to the main issues concerning the First Amendment and religious liberty, along with offering incisive new insights into one of the most important topics in American culture.

Since 9/11 and the onset of the "war on terror," the principal challenge confronting liberal democracies has been to balance freedom with security and individual with collective rights. This book sheds new light on the evolution of human rights norms in liberal democracies by charting the activism of four Canadian NGOs on issues of refugee rights, hate speech, and the death penalty, including their use of difficult, often controversial legal cases as platforms to assert human rights principles and shape judicial policy-making. The struggles of these NGOs reveal not only the fragility but also the resilience of ideas about rights in liberal democracies.

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.

Is it really true that martial arts, in spite of their popularity in this day and age of ours, have, at their deepest level, the promised land of "self-knowledge," "the expression of beauty," or something highly spiritual to be pursued for the human soul? Or, to put it in a different way, what exactly makes martial arts so amazing that, somehow, they will eventually lead the practitioners to the spiritual realm of self-cultivation in its highest depth? Contrary to the conventional wisdom about martial arts as held by many over the ages, this popular view about martial arts has become so legendary that their dark sides have yet to be systematically explored and that the lofty aims of martial arts are neither possible nor desirable to the extent that their proponents would like us to believe.Of course, this is not to say that the very tradition of martial arts is absolutely useless, or that the literature on martial arts hitherto existing in history is spiritually unworthy to be appreciated. Instead, this book constructively offers an alternative (better) way to understand the nature of martial arts, in special relation to the body and spirit of warriors-while learning from different views in the literature, without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, as they are not necessarily compatible with each other), and, in the end, transcending them towards a new horizon not conceived before. This seminal view, if proven valid, will fundamentally change the legendary way that people have thought about martial arts-from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its "post-human" fate._____________________