Religious Liberty

This article seeks to demonstrate both the importance of expertise and scholarship in framing a religion’s claim of legitimacy in law, and how expertise can be harnessed by a religious group to gain this legitimacy. From a broad overview of the consequences of religious status in law, the article analyses the tests used to attribute the status, to show the crucial role that their application affords to experts and scholarship. It then argues that new religious movements, and Scientology, are ideal case studies to illustrate the importance of scholars and scholarship. Scientology is indeed the only major religion to have emerged in the twentieth century and is unique in that it has, over this period, gained, lost, re-gained, and grappled with ongoing challenges to its status in law. The article then illustrates these issues with an analysis of two key periods from Scientology’s history: its ultimately successful fight to gain tax-exempt status in the United States in the 1980s, and its response to modern-day challenges to this status. Both periods illustrate, in different ways, how Scientology has recognised the power of expertise and scholarship, and sought to harness it to frame its claim of legitimacy in law.

The case of Lautsi v. Italy, better known as the “Crucifix Case,” is a particularly significant case. Its significance is not only political and legal, but also religious. Never before in the history of the European Court of Human Rights and the Council of Europe has a case raised so much public attention and debate. The debate regarding the legitimacy of the symbol of Christ’s presence in Italian schools is emblematic of the cultural crisis in Western Europe regarding religion. Twenty-one State parties to the European Convention on Human Rights, in an unprecedented move, joined Italy to reassert the legitimacy of the public display of Christian symbols in European society. The Court finally recognized, in substance, that in countries of Christian tradition, Christianity enjoys a special social legitimacy that distinguishes it from other philosophical and religious belief systems. In other words, because Italy is a country of Christian tradition, Christian symbols may legitimately enjoy greater visibility in Italian society than other religious or ideological symbols.

In this essay I argue that religion, understood as harmony with the transcendent source of existence and meaning, is a good that practical reason grasps as an objective, distinct and important aspect of human well-being, one which reasonably takes pride of place among the various aspects of a good human life due to its architectonic role in structuring and adding a transcendent meaning to all of the other goods that we pursue. On the basis of this view of religion, I go on to suggest that religious belief and practice deserve special protection in law, above and beyond mere preferences and even other conscientious commitments. I develop this view through a dialectical engagement with Dworkin, Barry, Eisgruber and Sager.

Bradley, James. 2020. “Canon Law and Political Discourse: What the Church Can and Must Offer Politics.” Ius & Iustitium (blog), 24 August. https://iusetiustitium.com/canon-law-and-political-discourse-what-the-church-can-and-must-offer-politics/.

Conventional understandings of Catholicism, especially the claim that the pope held temporal power over all civil rulers, presented a signal challenge to early American Catholics’ civil and religious liberty. Yet reform-minded Catholics in the North Atlantic world asserted their independence from the temporal powers of external authorities, including the pope. Catholics who participated in the American founding, such as Charles Carroll of Carrollton and John Carroll, drew from an intellectual tradition of conciliarism that was rooted in Catholic thought yet compatible with republicanism. The Carrolls’ public support of the nation’s foundational documents and their development of the American Catholic Church presented to the broader political and religious public a Catholic tradition that advocated not only a republican view of temporal independence but also a juridical, nonhierarchical understanding of church and state. Catholics of this sort were not a foil to American religious and political arrangements; instead, they fit their beliefs within the ideologies of the American founding and thereby answered Protestant charges that Catholics should be legally penalized. These conclusions offer compelling reasons to include the conciliarist tradition within the “multiple traditions approach” of American founding historiography.

Reviews "Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms: Images that inspire a nation" by Stuart Murray and James McCabe (Berkshire House, 1993; Grammercy, 1998).  Nearly every Norman Rockwell coffee table book includes his famous "Four Freedoms" paintings. Most tell the basic story behind the works-how the artist was inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt's State of the Union speech of 1941, how he sought without success to find sponsorship by a government agency, and how the paintings were originally published in four issues of Saturday Evening Post magazine in 1943. This generously illustrated volume by Stuart Murray and James McCabe tells a much more complete-and much more fascinating-story.  The book also includes the four essays published with the four paintings when they appeared in the Saturday Evening Post magazine in 1943 -- by Booth Tarkington, Carlos Bulosan, Stephen Vincent Benet, and Will Durant -- and five more essays by John Frohnmayer, Theodore H. Evans, James MacGregor Burns, Brian Urquhart, and William J. vanden Heuvel.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle Ages were divided in many ways. But one thing they shared in common was the fear that God was offended by wrong belief. Medieval Heresies: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam is the first comparative survey of heresy and its response throughout the medieval world. Spanning England to Persia, it examines heresy, error, and religious dissent - and efforts to end them through correction, persuasion, or punishment - among Latin Christians, Greek Christians, Jews, and Muslims. With a lively narrative that begins in the late fourth century and ends in the early sixteenth century, Medieval Heresies is an unprecedented history of how the three great monotheistic religions of the Middle Ages resembled, differed from, and even interrelated with each other in defining heresy and orthodoxy.

Εκδόσεις Σάκκουλα: Αθήνα-Θεσσαλονίκη, 2019, σελίδες ΧII + 139
Περισσότερες πληροφορίες στην ιστοσελίδα https://www.sakkoulas.gr/el/editions/d-goulas-oi-diakriseis-logo-thriskevtikon-symvolon-ston-choro-ergasias-2019/

[Discrimination on grounds of religious symbols, Sakkoulas Publications: Athens-Thessaloniki, 2019, XII+139 pages]

Πίνακας περιεχομένων  -

IX    Κυριότερες συντομογραφίες
1      1. Εισαγωγή
5      2. Το γενικό νομικό πλαίσιο του δικαίου της απαγόρευσης των διακρίσεων
5      2.1. Η απαγόρευση των διακρίσεων στο ελληνικό Σύνταγμα
6      2.2. Η απαγόρευση των διακρίσεων στην ΕΣΔΑ και τις λοιπές διεθνείς συμβάσεις
6      2.2.1. Η απαγόρευση των διακρίσεων ως διεθνώς κατοχυρωμένο ανθρώπινο δικαίωμα
7      2.2.2. Η απαγόρευση των διακρίσεων κατά την ΕΣΔΑ
11    2.3. Η απαγόρευση των διακρίσεων στο δίκαιο της Ε.Ε
11    2.3.1. Ίση αμοιβή ανδρών και γυναικών: Η θεμελίωση της απαγόρευσης των διακρίσεων και η μετάβαση από το οικονομικό στο κοινωνικό πλαίσιο της προστασίας
16    2.3.2. Η επέκταση των λόγω διάκρισης πέραν του φύλου
20    2.2.3. Η Οδηγία 2000/78
29    3. Η πρόσφατη νομολογία σχετικά με τις διακρίσεις λόγω θρησκευτικών συμβόλων στον χώρο εργασίας
29    3.1. Γενική θεώρηση
30    3.2. Η νομολογία του ΕΔΔΑ
30    3.2.1. Dahlab κατά Ελβετίας
32    3.2.2. Eweida και άλλοι κατά Ηνωμένου Βασιλείου
34    3.2.3. Ebrahimian κατά Γαλλίας
36    3.3. Η νομολογία του ΔΕΕ: Οι αποφάσεις στις υποθέσεις G4S Secure Solutions και Bougnaoui και ADDH
36    3.3.1. Προλεγόμενα
37    3.3.2. Τα πραγματικά περιστατικά της υπόθεσης G4S Secure Solutions
38    3.3.3. Τα πραγματικά περιστατικά της υπόθεσης Bougnaoui και ADDH
38    3.3.4. Οι Προτάσεις της Γενικής Εισαγγελέα Kokott επί της υπόθεσης G4S Secure Solutions
44    3.3.5. Οι Προτάσεις της Γενικής Εισαγγελέα Sharpston επί της υπόθεσης G4S Bougnaoui και ADDH
49    3.3.6. Η απόφαση του Δικαστηρίου στην υπόθεση G4S Secure Solutions
51    3.3.7. Η απόφαση του Δικαστηρίου στην υπόθεση Bougnaoui και ADDH
53    3.4. Αποφάσεις εθνικών δικαστηρίων
53    3.4.1. Γαλλικό Ακυρωτικό Δικαστήριο - απόφαση Baby Loup
55    3.4.2. Γερμανικό Ομοσπονδιακό Συνταγματικό Δικαστήριο - απαγόρευση μαντίλας σε δασκάλα δημόσιου σχολείου
58    3.4.3. Γερμανικό Εργατικό Ακυρωτικό
59    3.4.4. Αυστριακό Ακυρωτικό
61    3.4.5. Δανικό Ανώτατο Δικαστήριο
62    3.4.6. Ανώτατο Δικαστήριο των Η.Π.Α. - υπόθεση Abercrombie & Fitch
63    3.4.7. Καναδικό Ανώτατο Δικαστήριο, υπόθεση Βhinder v. CN.
64    4. Η διάκριση λόγω θρησκευτικών συμβόλων
64    4.1. Η έννοια της θρησκείας και των θρησκευτικών συμβόλων
64    4.1.1. Η έννοια της θρησκείας και των πεποιθήσεων
67    4.1.2. Τα σύμβολα ως εκδήλωση της θρησκείας ή των πεποιθήσεων
79    4.1.3. Η παραίτηση από τη θέση εργασίας ως έσχατη δυνατότητα διαφύλαξης της θρησκευτικής ελευθερίας
80    4.1.4. Τα θρησκευτικά σύμβολα υπό την οπτική του φύλου και των πολλαπλών διακρίσεων
83    4.2. Η διαφοροποίηση μεταξύ άμεσης και έμμεσης διάκρισης
83    4.2.1. Η έννοια της άμεσης και της έμμεσης διάκρισης στο δίκαιο της Ε.Ε. και ο κρίσιμος ρόλος της διαφοροποίησης μεταξύ τους
85    4.2.2. Πόσο ουδέτερη είναι η πολιτική «θρησκευτικής ουδετερότητας» μιας επιχείρησης;
102  4.2.3. Η ερμηνευτική διεύρυνση του περιθωρίου δικαιολόγησης της άμεσης διάκρισης και η στάθμιση των αντίρροπων θεμελιωδών δικαιωμάτων
107    4.3. Οι δυνατότητες δικαιολόγησης των διακρίσεων
107    4.3.1. Οι προτιμήσεις των πελατών ως ουσιαστική και καθοριστική επαγγελματική προϋπόθεση
110    4.3.2. Η «επιχειρηματική εικόνα» και η «πολιτική ουδετερότητας» ως θεμιτός σκοπός για τη δικαιολόγηση διακρίσεων
120    4.4. Κρίσιμα στοιχεία κατά τον έλεγχο αναλογικότητας της δυσμενούς μεταχείρισης
120    4.4.1. Η δυνατότητα εύλογων προσαρμογών
125    4.4.2. Η αξιολόγηση των επιπτώσεων εις βάρος του εργαζομένου
127    4.4.3. Η νομική φύση του εργοδότη
129    5. Επίλογος - συμπερασματικές θέσεις
131    6. Πίνακας Βιβλιογραφίας

After more than ten years of continued restrictions on religious freedom, in 1926 the Mexican bishops declared that since there were no minimum conditions for the priests to continue ministering. In this moment, many Mexican Catholics, because they had no choice to defend their religious freedom, they chose the path of arms: this is what is known as “Cristero War”. This brief paper provides the most important features to examine this stage in the history of Mexico.

בשני המאמרים "פעולות כפייתיות וטקסים דתיים" ו"אבל ומלנכוליה" באה לידי ביטוי המגמה שהלכה והתגברה בעבודתו התיאורטית של פרויד במרוצת השנים בניתוח פסיכולוגי-חברתי של מערכות תרבותיות, כגון דת וריטואל. הצמדתם של שני הטקסטים בכרך שלפנינו נועדה להציג את הקשר בין סוג כזה של ניתוח לבין האנליזה של האני ואת ההשפעה הדו-כיוונית שלהם, וכן להפגיש את הקורא עם מקורותיו התרבותיים והתיאורטיים של המושג הפרוידיאני החשוב כל כך של העל-אני, אותו חלק בנפש המפנים את הציווי החיצוני. נבקש על כן להציג להלן את ההקשר התרבותי לכתיבה הפרוידיאנית, הקשר שצבע את הסיטואציה הקלינית שעמה פרויד נפגש יום-יום.

In June 2018 the Supreme Court of the United States decided the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop, in which baker Jack Phillips refused to provide a cake for a same-sex wedding. The Court decided the case on fairly narrow grounds; in particular, it set aside the question of whether Phillips illegally discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation by refusing to sell the same cake to a gay couple that he would sell to a heterosexual couple. Concurring opinions by Justices Kagan and Gorsuch do address that question, however, and in this paper I explore the debate between them. By distinguishing between design-based and use-based refusals of service and then arguing that some use-based refusals are tantamount to discrimination on the basis of protected traits, I argue that Jack Phillips did indeed discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. I also argue that another baker, who refused to create a “Leviticus 18:22 ‘Homosexuality is a detestable sin’” cake, did not discriminate on the basis of religion. I thus side with Justice Kagan against Justice Gorsuch on the question of whether the Colorado commission treated the two bakers inconsistently.

This report assesses legal and regulatory responses to the practice of ritual male circumcision in the United Kingdom (UK). Within the UK, England and Wales is the primary focus for discussion: this jurisdiction represents the main legal site in which matters of ritual male circumcision have been considered. Comparatively, there is little, if any, legal guidance on the practice in Scotland and Northern Ireland, although brief reference is made to these separate jurisdictions, where relevant. The report contains three parts. Part II analyses the ways in which criminal law tackles ritual male circumcision. It argues that this arena is an inappropriate vehicle for legal control given the criminal law's incoherence in framing consent as a defence to bodily harm. Moreover, criminal law is unable to address the range of parental and children's rights issues that pervade the procedure. Next, Part III evaluates how family law engages with ritual male circumcision. It contends that this area offers a more conducive setting for discussion of the cultural and social factors relevant to parents and children in determining the legality of the practice. Subsequently, Part IV assesses the role of health law in providing effective guidance on ritual male circumcision. Finally, Part V concludes by arguing that if the procedure is to be legally permitted in specific situations, such guidance should be more detailed in constructing regulation that better protects the interests of parents, children and doctors.

Samuel Moyn in his ‘Christian Human Rights’ argues that the Catholic Church’s endorsement of human rights in 20th century was a tactical appropriation of an ideology alien to Catholicism – and it was designed to stop Communism. In a 2016 symposium with him, I took a different view. Belief in human rights, this paper argues, was central to traditional Catholic moral and political theology – in particular, the Church’s use of human rights to oppose religious coercion by states had a clear basis within the Catholic tradition. The new factor was not simply fear of Communism, but a central feature of Vatican II - a novel complacency about the effects on human nature of the Fall.  Published in King's Law Journal, 2017

According to a famous story, when Giordano Bruno (ca. 1548 –1600), an Italian monist philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet, who, following an Inquisition for heresy and the denial of several Catholic doctrines, was about to be burned at a stake in Rome, an old woman came near to the fire, mentioned the name of God and threw a stick inside. Bruno said there: “Oh holy asinity! holy ignorance! Holy foolishness and pious devotion!...” . This story brought the historic term of “holy ignorance”.  When a person or a group get into such an ignorance, it leads to some unacceptable horrible mistakes, of which one can point to a kind of “violence” consecrated by its committers. In fact, there is a very close connection between such an ignorance and religious radicalism. Nowadays in four corners of the world, we observe some groups rising and violating human dignities and social orders by the name of religion. Such beliefs are only due to misconceptions about religion, especially when speaking of Islam versus the West. On the other side, the concept of “tolerance” (tasāhul/tasāmoḥ) here manifests itself with its particular terminology, meaning “a behavior that not only tolerates the opponents, but allows them to express their beliefs, speech, and practices”. Such behavior occurs in a society wherein different social groups and parties live together with different beliefs and customs. Hence, tolerance is a policy from the state for reducing contradictions and crises in society.  Nevertheless, different ideas regarding the sound meaning of this term, which basically in Islam comes from the Qur’an and Hadith literature, led to contradict practices by different religious sects. The present paper, based on the analytical descriptive method and through Quranic notions, traditional and Islamic teachings and thinkers’ views, aims to discuss the extent and limits of tolerance in Islam, particularly concerning freedom, and how misconceptions about it brings about the tragic phenomenon of “holy ignorance”. It also criticizes both Muslim and Western opinions in this regard. Finally, it will show the connection between intolerance, holy ignorance, radicalism, and lack of sound understanding about religion.

Dignitatis Humanae of Vatican II did not contradict previous Catholic teaching on religious liberty. So I have argued, appealing to the teaching on Church and state of Leo XIII. The authority to direct religion coercively always belonged to the Church, not the state. And Dignitatis Humanae says nothing to deny the Church’s authority to coerce religiously. This paper shows that the commission at Vatican II that drafted the declaration gave the very same interpretation as me – from 1964 on consistently invoking the teaching of Leo XIII, admitting that religion is subject to the coercive authority of the Church, and denying that this authority is in any way addressed by the declaration. My interpretation of the declaration was the official interpretation at the Council.

Published in ‘Dignitatis Humanae Colloquium’ Dialogos Institute Volume 1, eds Thomas Crean OP and Alan Fimister, (Dialogos Institute 2017) pp105-46.

Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae forbids the state to use coercion for specifically religious ends, because the state lacks authority in matters of religion. But the nineteenth-century popes, Leo XIII included, called for the state to coerce for religious ends, to protect religious truth. A contradiction in Catholic teaching? The contradiction is only apparent. Leo XIII called on the state to coerce religiously - but only as an agent of the Church and under her authority. The paper shows that the commission drafting Dignitatis Humanae at Vatican II explicitly appealed to Leo XIII's theology to avoid clashing with nineteenth century teaching, and called on the Council fathers to understand the declaration in terms of Leo XIII's teaching. Far from contradicting the nineteenth century popes, the Vatican II declaration is an application of Leonine teaching for a new situation - where the state is detached from the Church.

The debate can be found on YouTube with the title:

Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Freedom: Revision, Reform, or Continuity?

This article presents the under-studied contribution of Charles Cardinal Journet to the final debate over Dignitatis Humanae (DH) at the last session of the Second Vatican Council. The article places Journet's decisive speech from the floor of the Council within the broader context of his ecclesiology, and it engages Journet's position with some prominent contemporary scholarship on DH.

This is an expanded version of an online paper on The Josias. It defends my Leonine interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae, the declaration of the Second Vatican Council that teaches a moral right of the individual, based on their human dignity, to religious liberty. The declaration, I have claimed, was an application for modern times of the magisterial teaching on church and state of Leo XIII. This leaves the declaration’s right to religious liberty strictly consistent with previous church teaching.

In another paper on The Josias Thomas Storck objects that I employ what was at best a political theology of the counter-reformation, the theology of Suarez and Bellarmine. According to Storck this theology was not shared by Leo XIII, was never magisterially taught, and had nothing to do with the drafting of Dignitatis Humanae.

Storck’s claims are false. From 1964 the drafting commission explained Dignitatis Humanae by appeal to Leo XIII's teaching that the church alone was the sovereign legal authority over religion on this earth. This view of church authority came to Leo XIII from Suarez, and dominated official theology within the Catholic church up to Vatican II. It was common property to a Vatican II conservative such as Cardinal Ottaviani, to the progressives who were preparing and explaining the declaration in its final draft, to Paul VI under whose authority this final draft was being prepared, and to Jacques Maritain, to whose theology Paul VI adhered.

The definition of "theocracy" has perplexed scholars for many centuries.  Some argue that theocracy exists only when religious leaders are also the actual, official political leaders and, as such, impose their particular theological views on the populace at large.  This essay argues that effective control of a polity by religious leaders and their theology is dispositive, regardless of the governmental organization that exists on paper.  For example, Roger Williams pointed out that in many theocracies (including that of seventeenth-century Massachusetts Bay) "the Magistrate is but the Ministers Cane through which the Clergy speaks . . . ."  "The Bloody Tenent Yet More Bloody" (London, 1652), 131.  The present essay was incorporated, with some additions and revisions, into Appendix B of Alan E. Johnson's book "The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience" (http://www.amazon.com/First-American-Founder-Williams-Conscience/dp/1511823712/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436397728&sr=1-1).  For a summary of some of the points in this book, see the author's YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOlUZaehYk7WmwW8v9oBMzQ) about Roger Williams, including an interview (https://youtu.be/mGRl5lIbdYY) with the author about this book.

Note:  The sentence and citation on page 5, n.1, in this article referring to John M. Barry's book on Roger Williams should be qualified by Barry's remarks elsewhere in his book:  "Technically, the Bay was not a theocracy. Consistent with the admonition to render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s, and to God those which were God’s, the plantation prohibited a minister or church officer from simultaneously holding a government office. (For this reason some historians have argued that Puritan Massachusetts actually advanced the concept of separation of church and state.) But if not a theocracy, Massachusetts was theocentric."  Barry, Roger Williams, 169.  As discussed in this article, I disagree with the position that Massachusetts Bay was not a theocracy.

The paper, published by The Josias, argues that whether or not Vatican II introduced inconsistency into magisterial teaching, it has led to a crisis in official theology. Official theology is asserted by Church office holders in execution of their roles while not meeting conditions for counting as magisterial teaching. The nature of official theology is explored, and the problematic nature of the post-conciliar official theology of baptism examined. This theology is inconsistent with the historical magisterium, and affects the liturgy and views of grace, the role of sacraments in salvation, Church and state, Jewish salvation, marriage and family teaching, and conditions for communion as debated in relation to Amoris Laetitia.

This chapter examines some central features to liberal conceptions of toleration and liberty of conscience. The first section briefly examines conceptions of toleration and liberty of conscience in the traditions of Locke, Rawls, and Mill. The second section considers contemporary controversies surrounding toleration and liberty of conscience with a focus on neutrality and equality. The third section examines several challenges, including whether non-religious values should be afforded the same degree of accommodation as religious values, whether liberty of conscience requires a secular state, and how bias impedes understandings of toleration and liberty of conscience. The chapter concludes with brief comments on future directions for research on toleration and liberty of conscience. One is exploring toleration and liberty of conscience in non-Western contexts; another is exploring ways that varieties of religious and political identity impact conceptions of toleration and liberty of conscience. Liberty of conscience is central to liberal conceptions of toleration. One tradition that runs from John Locke (1983) through John Rawls (2005) holds that liberty of conscience is a fundamental right. A conception of the person as free and equal is a primary moral basis for toleration on this view. John Stuart Mill (1978) represents another tradition. On his view, utility is the moral basis for toleration and liberty of conscience. Both collective and individual interests are best promoted by a policy of toleration that extends to religious among other value commitments. The limits to liberty are set by the harm principle: toleration extends to beliefs and actions that do not cause or pose a significant risk of harm to others. Political philosophers in both traditions claim that liberty of conscience is a fundamental feature to a liberal conception of toleration.

Published in The Thomist vol 79, 2015, pp1-42. This paper, originally a lecture given at Mundelein in October 2013, examines Jacques Maritain's "Man and the State' and its impact on Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae. Maritain helped contribute to a post-concilar 'official theology' endorsing Church-state separation. This official theology is not magisterially taught in Dignitatis Humanae, and is (a) internally incoherent, and (b) in clear conflict with Leo XIII's endorsement as an ideal of a soul-body union of Church and state. The official theology drastically underestimates the gulf that lies between secular political theory and the view of religion and the state taken by Dignitatis Humanae. Far from initiating a more harmonious concord with the secular world, Dignitatis Humanae marks the initiation of profound conflict between the secular state and the Church.

In a reply to me in his festschrift 'Reason, Morality, and Law' (Oxford 2013) John Finnis claimed that the Council of Trent never taught doctrinally in support of the legal coercion of heretical baptised back into fidelity. This paper shows that in condemning Erasmus in its decree on baptism Trent did indeed do just that - doctrinally endorse coercion of faith in the baptised. The paper shows that Finnis's argument is a mixture of anachronism and serious misinterpretation of the Council Acta. Finnis' 'alternative history' is linked to a wider tendency in 'conservative' Catholicism since Vatican II to rewrite the Church's past.

Cross-national empirical research consistently suggests that, on average, former British colonies are both more democratic and have more stable democratic transitions. I argue that former British colonies are distinct not because Great Britain was a democracy – so were France and Belgium during the late 19th and early 20th century. Nor were the British more altruistic. However, British colonial elites were more divided and thus more constrained. In particular, religious groups were more independent from state control in British colonies than in historically-Catholic colonies (i.e., colonies of France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Italy). Initially the British restricted missions in their colonies, but Evangelical Protestants forced the British to allow religious liberty in 1813. Protestants were not able to win religious liberty in most other European colonizers during the entire period of colonization.
    Protestant missionaries were central to expanding formal education in the colonies because they wanted people to read the Bible in their own language. Governments wanted a small educated elite that they could control. Other religious groups invested in mass vernacular education primarily when competing with Protestants.
    Missionaries also constrained colonial abuses when they were independent from state control (i.e., chose their own leaders and raised their own funds). If colonial exploitation was extreme, it angered indigenous people against the West and made mission work difficult. Thus missionaries had incentive to fight abuses. Other colonial elites had no incentive to expose their abuses, and indigenous people had little power in the colonizing state. This left missionaries in a unique bridging position. Non-state missionaries also fostered institutions outside state control, institutions that nationalist leaders later used to challenge British colonization and birth political parties.
    Statistical analysis confirms the centrality of missions in expanding education and fostering democracy. Controlling for Protestant missions removes the association between democracy and British colonization, other “Protestant” colonization, percent European, percent Muslim, being an island nation, and being a landlocked nation. Other controls (such as current GDP, and current education enrollments) do not remove the strong positive association between Protestant missions and democracy.

Martin Rhonheimer has argued that in condemning religious coercion by the state, Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae was a reform of previous Catholic teaching on the authority of the state.

The paper argues, by contrast, that past Catholic endorsement of religious coercion in defence of the faith was not based on any doctrine of state authority. It was the Church, not the state, that had the authority to coerce religiously, the state acting only as the Church's agent. Vatican II said nothing to contradict the traditional understanding of the Church as a religiously coercive authority, which looks dogmatic, and which is still central to modern canon law.

The paper examines traditional doctrine on the coercive authority of the Church and its relations to the state, and shows how Dignitatis Humanae did nothing to amend or reform this teaching. In particular Dignitatis Humanae did not deny previous and highly authoritative papal teaching on the desirability of a Catholic state. Leo XIII's hylemorphic theory of the ideal Church-state relation as that of a soul-body union is shown to be based on dogmatic teaching on grace and nature.

Religious freedom, and the status of religion in the public square, is presently a matter of worldwide debate. However, it is necessary to clarify the terms of the debate. This dissertation will offer a challenging invitation to deepen our understanding of the fundamental meaning of religious freedom by analyzing and challenging the notions of "religion," "freedom," and the "public square" as they have been commonly employed in discussions related to religious freedom and the place of religion in the public square in the works of Richard John Neuhaus, John Rawls, Robert Audi, José Casanovas, Jürgen Habermas, and Charles Taylor. It will also challenge the notion of "religious freedom" employed by international and legal documents, and in the work of David Schlinder, John Courtney Murray, and Martha Nussbaum. Following the work of Rainer Forst, it will also show why religious freedom should not be understood as "tolerance."
The goal of the book, then, is to provide a more effective way of dealing with issues of religious freedom and the place of religion in the public square. My investigation will be centered on Thomas Aquinas' notion of religion as a moral virtue, and Hanna Arendt's notion of political freedom. The novelty of this investigation will be in that the virtue of religion will be analyzed in connection to the proper place for the performance of its acts, namely, the private or the public sphere. The book will also show how Aquinas' notion of religion and its deviations (vices) offers a valuable guideline insofar as the public is concerned.
As a consequence, a new meaning will be offered on the notion of religious freedom, based on Aquinas' view of religion as virtue, and Arendt's notion of political freedom as a stage for virtue, which will help clarify the debate on religious freedom and the place of religion in the public square.

In Western liberal democracies religion has a special status. For example, the law allows a religious adherent to leave work for a holy day though not for a football match. Why is it that religion has been so privileged? It was the “why” that Bussey wanted to find an answer to.’During his research he found that the current accommodation of religion in the law is being robustly challenged – and even disregarded – by government actors, legal academics, and the media. The case study is the Trinity Western University case in Canada. This private, evangelical institution proposed to open a law school, but three provincial law societies refused accreditation because they deemed the admission’s requirement (which defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman) discriminatory against the LGBTQ community. In 2018, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of the law societies.Religious institutions that maintain traditional beliefs and practices are increasingly characterized as discriminatory. The extent to which this criticism is being accepted by the courts and the legal community is new. Using Thomas S. Kuhn’s theory, Bussey calls this development a legal revolution against religious accommodation.

The seventeenth-century English Revolution was pulsing with new democratic ideas of civil rights, marital freedom, freedom of speech and press, religious liberty, separation of church-state, and disestablishment of religion. The English philosopher and poet, John Milton was among the most radical and articulate advocate of these ideas, which he set out in hundreds of pages of brilliant and trenchant prose. This Article offers a full account of Milton's reformist agenda and uncovers some of the genesis and genius of his ideas in earlier Christian and classical traditions. It also documents the enduring significance of Milton's ideas for later Anglo-American writers like John Locke, and later common law and constitutional reforms on both sides of the Atlantic.

The long-standing contest over a 1500 square yard plot of land, situated in the city of Ayodhya, located in the district of Faizabad in the state of Uttar Pradesh in north India, has become a site where religious groups, pilgrims, lawyers, and even gods are battling to establish their claims of rightful ownership. The issue has been simmering in independent India since its birth in 1947 and arose well before that time. The courts have been called upon time and again to adjudicate on this fraught issue, where their decisions are not only defining the parameters of the right to freedom of religion, but are implicated in the very construction of faith and belief. In this article, I examine how the right to freedom of religion has emerged in law, focusing on the 125-year-old property dispute in Ayodhya. I discuss how the reasoning of the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgement partly resulted in reproducing and reinforcing Hindu majoritarianism through its interpretation of the right to freedom of religion and the broader implications of the decision on the meaning and definition of secularism in Indian constitutional discourse. I also underscore how the law and judicial discourse has played a central role in enabling the Hindu Right, a right wing political and ideological movement intent on establishing India as a Hindu State and a key player in the Ayodhya dispute, to successfully pursue its agenda through the right to freedom of religion.