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Author: K. D. Whitehead
Publisher: Saint Pauls
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780818913136
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Vatican II adopted an approach to religious liberty based on affirming the human dignity of the religious believer. This book goes into detail regarding the implications of this new emphasis on what the Church has traditionally held and taught, but which has not always been well understood.
Author: William N. Eskridge Jr
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2018-11-22
Total Pages: 567
ISBN-13: 1108470157
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →LGBT, faith, and academic thought-leaders explore prospects for laws protecting each community's core interests and possible resolutions for culture-war conflicts.
Author: Ryan Snow
Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
Published: 2019-10-29
Total Pages: 131
ISBN-13: 1645597539
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Who would have thought that late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would write a judicial opinion severely debilitating the free exercise of religion and democrats like Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy would come to the rescue? This is all true-it happened in the early 1990s-resulting in the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The federal RFRA enjoyed wide bipartisan support in the early 1990s. Yet more recently, various states have tried to enact their own versions of RFRA but have been met with enormous opposition. What happened to change people's minds about religious freedom? Are religious freedom laws really "license to discriminate"? This book seeks to add context to the contemporary debates regarding religious freedom, specifically RFRA, and related laws. Religious freedom laws may not be as bad as some want you to think.
Author: Richard John Neuhaus
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Published: 1986
Total Pages: 300
ISBN-13: 9780802800800
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Underlying the many crises in American life, writes Richard John Neuhaus, is a crisis of faith. It is not enough that more people should believe or that those who believe should believe more strongly. Rather, the faith of persons and communities must be more compellingly related to the public arena. "The naked public square"--which results from the exclusion of popular values from the public forum--will almost certainly result in the death of democracy. The great challenge, says Neuhaus, is the reconstruction of a public philosophy that can undergird American life and America's ambiguous place in the world. To be truly democratic and to endure, such a public philosophy must be grounded in values that are based on Judeo-Christian religion. The remedy begins with recognizing that democratic theory and practice, which have in the past often been indifferent or hostile to religion, must now be legitimated in terms compatible with biblical faith. Neuhaus explores the strengths and weaknesses of various sectors of American religion in pursuing this task of critical legitimation. Arguing that America is now engaged in an historic moment of testing, he draws upon Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish thinkers who have in other moments of testing seen that the stakes are very high--for America, for the promise of democratic freedom elsewhere, and possibly for God's purpose in the world. An honest analysis of the situation, says Neuhaus, shatters false polarizations between left and right, liberal and conservative. In a democratic culture, the believer's respect for nonbelievers is not a compromise but a requirement of the believer's faith. Similarly, the democratic rights of those outside the communities of religious faith can be assured only by the inclusion of religiously-grounded values in the common life. The Naked Public Square does not offer yet another partisan program for political of social change. Rather, it offers a deeply disturbing, but finally hopeful, examination of Abraham Lincoln's century-old question--whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.
Author: Michael I. Meyerson
Publisher:
Published: 2012
Total Pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9786613600875
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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, Meyerson concludes. Now it is for us to determine whether religion will be used to alienate and divide or to inspire and unify our religiously diverse nation.
Author: Caroline A. Westerhoff
Publisher: Church Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2004-08-01
Total Pages: 187
ISBN-13: 0819227552
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Hospitality and inclusion are important to the Church. Monastic communities are held up as a model, opening their doors to those who need a place to rest. But they also place boundaries on that hospitality, asking guests to observe house rules, and maintaining a cloistered area where guests are not permitted. "Good fences make good neighbors," wrote Robert Frost. Drawing on her training as a biologist and church consultant, Caroline Westerhoff explores the theological questions raised by boundaries. Filled with stories of actual families and communities, this book is excellent reading for church leaders and for individuals who want to be inclusive and yet maintain boundaries in their lives. John Westerhoff's study questions make this a helpful resource for parish study groups.
Author: Frank S. Ravitch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2016-09-08
Total Pages: 247
ISBN-13: 1108108059
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Freedom's Edge takes the reader directly into the heart of the debate over the relationship between religious freedom and LGBT and reproductive rights. The book explains these complex areas of law, and what is at stake in the battle to protect each of these rights. The book argues that religious freedom and sexual freedom share some common elements and that in most contexts it is possible to protect both. Freedom's Edge explains why this is so, and provides a roadmap for finding common ground and maximizing freedoms on both sides. The book will enable anyone with an interest in these issues to understand what the law actually teaches us about religious freedom, sexual freedom, and how they interact. This is important because what is often argued by partisans on both sides distorts the legal and cultural stakes, and diminishes the possibility of compromise.
Author: Steven D. Smith
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2014-02-18
Total Pages: 236
ISBN-13: 0674730135
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Familiar accounts of religious freedom in the United States often tell a story of visionary founders who broke from centuries-old patterns of Christendom to establish a political arrangement committed to secular and religiously neutral government. These novel commitments were supposedly embodied in the religion clauses of the First Amendment. But this story is largely a fairytale, Steven Smith says in this incisive examination of a much-mythologized subject. The American achievement was not a rejection of Christian commitments but a retrieval of classic Christian ideals of freedom of the church and of conscience. Smith maintains that the First Amendment was intended merely to preserve the political status quo in matters of religion. America's distinctive contribution was, rather, a commitment to open contestation between secularist and providentialist understandings of the nation which evolved over the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, far from vindicating constitutional principles, as conventional wisdom suggests, the Supreme Court imposed secular neutrality, which effectively repudiated this commitment to open contestation. Instead of upholding what was distinctively American and constitutional, these decisions subverted it. The negative consequences are visible today in the incoherence of religion clause jurisprudence and the intense culture wars in American politics.
Author: Kojo Koram
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
Published: 2019
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780745338804
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Fifty years of the War on Drugs has led to millions of deaths, displacements, and incarcerations. Disproportionately enacted on oppressed races, international drug prohibition has reinforced the color line across the globe. This collection reveals the racist impact of the war on drugs across multiple continents and in numerous situations, from racialized drug policing at festivals in the United Kingdom to the necropolitical wars in Juarez, Mexico, and from the exchange of drug policing programs between the United States and Israel to the management of black bodies in Brazil. Pushing forward the debate and activism led by groups such as Black Lives Matter and calling for radical changes in drug policy legislation and prison reform, this collection proves that the problem of drugs and race is an international, and intentional, disaster.
Author: Ryan T. Anderson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2015-07-14
Total Pages: 256
ISBN-13: 1621574598
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"Every leader in America needs to read this book! It's by far the best summary of what's at stake." —Rick Warren The Supreme Court has issued a decision, but that doesn't end the debate. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled, Americans face momentous debates about the nature of marriage and religious liberty. Because the Court has redefined marriage in all 50 states, we have to energetically protect our freedom to live according to conscience and faith as we work to rebuild a strong marriage culture. In the first book to respond to the Supreme Court's decision on same-sex marriage, Ryan Anderson draws on the best philosophy and social science to explain what marriage is, why it matters for public policy, and the consequences of its legal redefinition. Attacks on religious liberty--predicated on the bogus equation of opposition to same-sex marriage with racism--have already begun, and modest efforts in Indiana and other states to protect believers' rights have met with hysterics from media and corporate elites. Anderson tells the stories of innocent citizens who have been coerced and penalized by the government and offers a strategy to protect the natural right of religious liberty. Anderson reports on the latest research on same-sex parenting, filling it out with the testimony of children raised by gays and lesbians. He closes with a comprehensive roadmap on how to rebuild a culture of marriage, with work to be done by everyone. The nation's leading defender of marriage in the media and on university campuses, Ryan Anderson has produced the must-read manual on where to go from here. There are reasonable and compelling arguments for the truth about marriage, but too many of our neighbors haven't heard them. Truth is never on "the wrong side of history," but we have to make the case. We will decide which side of history we are on.
