Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court


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.




Religious Liberty in Crisis


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.




Religious Liberty, Volume 2


Book Description

For more than thirty years, Douglas Laycock has been studying, defending, and writing about religious liberty. In this second volume of the comprehensive collection of his writings on the subject, he has compiled articles, amicus briefs, and actual court documents relating to regulatory exemptions under the Constitution, the right to church autonomy, and the rights of non-mainstream religions. This collection — which deals with religious schools and colleges, sex abuse cases, the rights of Hare Krishnas and Scientologists, the landmark decision Employment Division v. Smith, and more — will be a valuable reference for churches, schools, and other religious organizations as they exercise their Constitutionally protected freedom of religion.




Liberty for All


Book Description

Christians are often thought of as defending only their own religious interests in the public square. They are viewed as worrying exclusively about the erosion of their freedom to assemble and to follow their convictions, while not seeming as concerned about publicly defending the rights of Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and atheists to do the same. Andrew T. Walker, an emerging Southern Baptist public theologian, argues for a robust Christian ethic of religious liberty that helps the church defend religious freedom for everyone in a pluralistic society. Whether explicitly religious or not, says Walker, every person is striving to make sense of his or her life. The Christian foundations of religious freedom provide a framework for how Christians can navigate deep religious difference in a secular age. As we practice religious liberty for our neighbors, we can find civility and commonality amid disagreement, further the church's engagement in the public square, and become the strongest defenders of religious liberty for all. Foreword by noted Princeton scholar Robert P. George.




Religious Liberty Library


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Challenges to Religious Liberty in the Twenty-first Century


Book Description

"Almost everyone today affirms the importance and merit of religious liberty. But religious liberty is being challenged by new questions (for example, use of the niqab or church adoption services for same-sex couples) and new forces (such as globalization and Islamism). Combined, these make the meaning of religious liberty in the twenty-first century uncertain. This collection of essays by ten of the world's leading scholars on religious liberty takes aim at these issues. The book is arranged around five specific challenges to religious liberty today: the state's responsibility to prevent coercion and intimidation of believers by others within the same faith community; the U.S.'s basic moral responsibilities to promote religious liberty abroad; how to understand and apply the traditional right of conscientious objection in today's circumstances; the distinctive problems presented by globalization; and the viability today of an 'originalist' interpretation of the First Amendment religion clauses"--Provided by publisher




Religious Liberty Library


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Same-sex Marriage and Religious Liberty


Book Description

Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty explores the religious freedom implications of defining marriage to include same-sex couples. It represents the only comprehensive, scholarly appraisal to date of the church-state conflicts virtually certain to arise from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. It explores two principal questions. First, exactly what kind of religious freedom conflicts are likely to emerge if society embraces same-sex marriage? A redefinition of marriage would impact a host of laws where marital status affects legal rights--in housing, employment, health-care, education, public accommodations, and property, in addition to family law. These laws, in turn, regulate a host of religious institutions--schools, hospitals, and social service providers, to name a few--that often embrace a different definition of marriage. As a result, church-state conflicts will follow. This volume anticipates where and how these manifold disputes will arise. Second, how might these conflicts be resolved? If the disputes spark litigation under the Free Speech, Free Exercise, or Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment, who will prevail and why? When, if ever, should claims of religious liberty prevail over claims of sexual liberty? Drawing on experience in analogous areas of law, the volume explores whether it is possible to avoid these constitutional conflicts by statutory accommodation, or by separating religious marriage from civil marriage.




The Political Origins of Religious Liberty


Book Description

Throughout history, governments have attempted to control religious organizations and limit religious freedom. However, over the past two hundred years the world has witnessed an expansion of religious liberty. What explains this rise in religious freedom? Anthony Gill argues that political leaders are more likely to allow religious freedom when such laws affect their ability to stay in power, and/or when religious freedoms are seen to enhance the economic well-being of their country.




The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty


Book Description

RIGHT AND WRONG CONCEPTIONS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOMMichael Davies writes that St. Thomas Aquinas summed up the fundamental principle upon which the traditional Catholic teaching of the Church is based in this quotation from the Angelic Doctor: " Now the end of human life and society is God." From this fact our author draws the conclusion: "The State, therefore, has no right to be "secular." It must, as a State, recognize the Kingship of Jesus Christ and do Him homage; and, of course, so act that there is no contradiction between the laws it passes and the laws of God.BECOME AWARE OF THE RECENT CHANGES IN THE CHURCHThis book deals with the right and wrong conceptions of religious freedom. Special emphasis is placed on the weaknesses and confusions of the (non-infallible) Declaration on Religious Freedom of Vatican II, which contains a number of questionable assertions which have greatly added to the confusion of Catholics and others since it was approved by Vatican II in 1965. This makes The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty indispensable for any Catholic who is aware of the recent changes in the Catholic Church.Michael Davies is an author of amazing industry and power. Between the years 1976 and 1983, he published "Cranmer's Godly Order"; a two-volume Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, "about an Archbishop unpopular in his time but with views well worth pondering today;" "Pope John's Council," "Pope Paul's New Mass," "The Order of Melchisedech," on the priesthood, "Partisans of Error," on Modernism, and "Newman Against the Liberals," besides nine pamphlets - all written when he was still quite young, teaching school in England, and supporting a growing family. Today these volumes are as readable and useful as they were then - and uncomfortably prophetic.