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Law, Religion and Love - Seeking Ecumenical Justice for the Other (Hardcover)
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Law, Religion and Love - Seeking Ecumenical Justice for the Other (Hardcover)
Series: Law and Religion
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Increasingly, the modern neo-liberal world marginalises any notion
of religion or spirituality, leaving little or no room for the
sacred in the public sphere. While this process advances, the
conservative and harmful behaviours associated with some religions
and their adherents exacerbate this marginalisation by driving out
those who remain religious or spiritual. And all of this is seen
through the lens of social science, which seems to agree that
religion remains important, if not in spiritual sense, at least as
a source of folklore and a means of identification: religions
remain rooted in the societies from which they emerged, and the
legal systems of many of those societies emerged from religious
sources, even if those societies remain unwilling to admit that
fact. In the modern materialistic world of conformity, religion is
less a source of guidance than a label of identification. The world
therefore faces two issues. First, the decreasing level of
spirituality in the 'West' widens the gap between worshippers and
those who have left their faith (eg agnostics and atheists, or
those who look at religion as a matter of 'picking and choosing'
from a range of options). And, second, the strong connections to
religion which remain in many nations, but which are often misused
in the secular public sphere (both in the West and
internationally). In such divided worlds, both religious and
secular forces tend to lock themselves into closed groupings of
'pure truth' and in so doing increase the level of disagreement, in
turn producing radicalism. In short, the modern world is divided in
two ways: between religious and non-religious (although some have
argued that the non-religious secular is itself a form of civil
religion), and between those subscribing to divergent
understandings of the same religious tradition. While hyperbolic
and histrionic, the term 'culture wars' nonetheless best captures
what we see happening in the public sphere today. The question
emerges, then: how best to accommodate the democratic principle
which posits that the majority should feel that it lives in a
society of its own with the human rights principle, holding that is
necessary to ensure the full protection of the minority's rights?
How to balance these seemingly opposed principles? We are very
familiar with the differences that appear between secular and
sacred in the modern world; yet, what of the similarities amongst
scriptures and laws which seek to encourage mutual understanding,
cooperation and even cohabitation? Because religion itself is a
source of law, a set of exhortations or commands as much as a set
of rights, every major religion offers an approach to encountering
'the Other' in a positive, constructive, affirming way; and it is
here that religions reveal much that they have in common. This book
draws together the work of scholars engaged in exploring the
possibilities for a 'utopian' world in the sense fostered by St
Thomas More. The essays explore those dimensions of religious and
civil law where 'love' - however that is defined by relevant texts
- fosters and encourages acceptance of 'the Other' and will offer
perspectives on the ways in which religious or civil/state law
command one to act in the spirit of 'love'.
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