It does not take too long reading the news to see that US–China relations are not exactly at a high (or even a normal low). From their tensions over trade and technology, to their clashes over Xinjiang that spilled over to the 2022 Winter Olympics, the United States and China have repeatedly shown that they are not just geopolitical rivals, but rivals with deep differences on the basics of justice and political life. In the heat of deep, cross-cultural differences like these, editors Zhibin Xie, Pauline Kollontai, and Sebastian Kim’s Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice: A Chinese Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Global Perspective provides timely and provocative insight on what it means for individuals and institutions “to do justice, and to love kindness” (Micah 6:8 [English Standard Version]) in China and worldwide. With contributions from fourteen scholars in numerous countries and disciplines, Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice wrestles with the concepts announced in its title by movingwell beyond the confines of Rawlsian ethics or Lockean political philosophy. Instead, the fourteen chapters challenge readers to think deeply about justice with tools from Confucian thought, Christian ethics, and the lived experiences of people in China, the United States, Australia, Israel, and beyond. Readers who chew on the book’s material patiently and charitably, will find themselves richly rewarded. The book begins by exploring a Confucian conception of social justice. As Yunping Wang explains in chapter 1, a Confucian take on social justice would start from inherently relational ideas of human nature, virtue, and the good life (13). Rather than conjure up independent individuals controlling their own destinies without outside interference, a Confucian notion of the good life envisions relational beings living together in harmony, fulfilling the familial and societal roles they owe one another (12–13). The reason, then, for a ruler to provide materially for the ruled—that is, to bring about what somemight call social justice—is not that the ruler must fulfill the individual rights of his subjects (13); rather, it is that a ruler should be benevolent, and the virtue of benevolence does not accordwith letting one’s community die from starvation (13). Focusing further on virtue, Yong Li (chapter 2) affirms the argument that Confucianism can ground human rights in humanmoral potential—a potential that differentiates humans
{"title":"Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice: A Chinese Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Global Perspective. Edited by Zhibin Xie, Pauline Kollontai, and Sebastian Kim. Singapore: Springer Nature, 2020. Pp. 239. $149.99 (cloth); $149.99 (paper); $109.00 (digital). ISBN: 9789811550805.","authors":"Eric H. Wang","doi":"10.1017/jlr.2022.24","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2022.24","url":null,"abstract":"It does not take too long reading the news to see that US–China relations are not exactly at a high (or even a normal low). From their tensions over trade and technology, to their clashes over Xinjiang that spilled over to the 2022 Winter Olympics, the United States and China have repeatedly shown that they are not just geopolitical rivals, but rivals with deep differences on the basics of justice and political life. In the heat of deep, cross-cultural differences like these, editors Zhibin Xie, Pauline Kollontai, and Sebastian Kim’s Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice: A Chinese Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Global Perspective provides timely and provocative insight on what it means for individuals and institutions “to do justice, and to love kindness” (Micah 6:8 [English Standard Version]) in China and worldwide. With contributions from fourteen scholars in numerous countries and disciplines, Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice wrestles with the concepts announced in its title by movingwell beyond the confines of Rawlsian ethics or Lockean political philosophy. Instead, the fourteen chapters challenge readers to think deeply about justice with tools from Confucian thought, Christian ethics, and the lived experiences of people in China, the United States, Australia, Israel, and beyond. Readers who chew on the book’s material patiently and charitably, will find themselves richly rewarded. The book begins by exploring a Confucian conception of social justice. As Yunping Wang explains in chapter 1, a Confucian take on social justice would start from inherently relational ideas of human nature, virtue, and the good life (13). Rather than conjure up independent individuals controlling their own destinies without outside interference, a Confucian notion of the good life envisions relational beings living together in harmony, fulfilling the familial and societal roles they owe one another (12–13). The reason, then, for a ruler to provide materially for the ruled—that is, to bring about what somemight call social justice—is not that the ruler must fulfill the individual rights of his subjects (13); rather, it is that a ruler should be benevolent, and the virtue of benevolence does not accordwith letting one’s community die from starvation (13). Focusing further on virtue, Yong Li (chapter 2) affirms the argument that Confucianism can ground human rights in humanmoral potential—a potential that differentiates humans","PeriodicalId":44042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Religion","volume":"60 1","pages":"427 - 430"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75034569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The sheer magnitude of the vision presented by Timothy Jackson in Mordecai Would Not Bow Down: Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Christian Supersessionismmakes any review immeasurably challenging. Jackson, a professor of ethics at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, focuses on the long history of anti-Semitism that culminated in the Nazi Holocaust in the context of a multiplicity of literature from the Bible through Shakespeare and contemporary Holocaust scholarship. Jackson critiques the understanding of the Holocaust by several prominent scholars such as Hannah Arendt and Daniel Goldhagen while his introduction of a wide array of views on human self-understanding results in a richness for further reflection not found in most writings on anti-Semitism and Nazi ideology. The frequent brevity of the citationsmakes for a somewhat unhinged presentation at times. The one more extended discussion of a resource comes in the concluding section where we find an in-depth reflection on the witness of Anne Frank and her diary. Yet even the brief quotes are suggestive of additional thought that could easily produce material for a second volume. A central thesis links together the many disparate insights that Jackson offers. Simply put, for Jackson, Jews have undergone continued persecution over the centuries because of the ideals for human behavior central to their self-understanding as a people. These ideals have stood in sharp contrast to the power-lust combination that has categorized so-called worldly wisdom. Ultimately anti-Semitism can be overcome only through amindset that has a positive Semitism at its core. This Semitismmust be willing to embrace the Jewish call to a higher standard ofmorality that calls humanity to lives of goodness, truth, and beauty for no reason other than their intrinsic preciousness. As Jackson sees it, this Jewish tradition of high moral commitment stands as the ultimate cause of the Nazi desire to remove Jews from the face of the earth. He does not totally deny the presence of some other causal factors for the rise of Nazism such as a social vision of power embedded in pre-Christian German tribal identity. But the moral standards promoted by the Jewish tradition must be seen as fundamentally central in any sound analysis of the Holocaust. This is something that is largely missing in the writings of most Holocaust scholars such as Arendt and Goldhagen, to name but two. Jackson sees this interpretation of the root cause of the Holocaust as also a guide for any theological and
{"title":"Mordecai Would Not Bow Down: Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Christian Supersessionism. By Timothy P. Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 288. $74.00 (cloth); $72.99 (digital). ISBN: 9780197538050.","authors":"J. Pawlikowski","doi":"10.1017/jlr.2022.22","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2022.22","url":null,"abstract":"The sheer magnitude of the vision presented by Timothy Jackson in Mordecai Would Not Bow Down: Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Christian Supersessionismmakes any review immeasurably challenging. Jackson, a professor of ethics at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, focuses on the long history of anti-Semitism that culminated in the Nazi Holocaust in the context of a multiplicity of literature from the Bible through Shakespeare and contemporary Holocaust scholarship. Jackson critiques the understanding of the Holocaust by several prominent scholars such as Hannah Arendt and Daniel Goldhagen while his introduction of a wide array of views on human self-understanding results in a richness for further reflection not found in most writings on anti-Semitism and Nazi ideology. The frequent brevity of the citationsmakes for a somewhat unhinged presentation at times. The one more extended discussion of a resource comes in the concluding section where we find an in-depth reflection on the witness of Anne Frank and her diary. Yet even the brief quotes are suggestive of additional thought that could easily produce material for a second volume. A central thesis links together the many disparate insights that Jackson offers. Simply put, for Jackson, Jews have undergone continued persecution over the centuries because of the ideals for human behavior central to their self-understanding as a people. These ideals have stood in sharp contrast to the power-lust combination that has categorized so-called worldly wisdom. Ultimately anti-Semitism can be overcome only through amindset that has a positive Semitism at its core. This Semitismmust be willing to embrace the Jewish call to a higher standard ofmorality that calls humanity to lives of goodness, truth, and beauty for no reason other than their intrinsic preciousness. As Jackson sees it, this Jewish tradition of high moral commitment stands as the ultimate cause of the Nazi desire to remove Jews from the face of the earth. He does not totally deny the presence of some other causal factors for the rise of Nazism such as a social vision of power embedded in pre-Christian German tribal identity. But the moral standards promoted by the Jewish tradition must be seen as fundamentally central in any sound analysis of the Holocaust. This is something that is largely missing in the writings of most Holocaust scholars such as Arendt and Goldhagen, to name but two. Jackson sees this interpretation of the root cause of the Holocaust as also a guide for any theological and","PeriodicalId":44042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Religion","volume":"5 1","pages":"412 - 415"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88216171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As any legal scholar knows, in modern democracies lacking monarchical leaders, no individual right is absolute. Just as the deeply revered right to freedom of speech does not permit one to threaten bodily harm against another person, the individual freedom of religion does not allow an adherent to infringe unreasonably upon the rights of someone else. In his brief but dense Faith or Fraud: Fortune-Telling, Spirituality, and the Law, Jeremy Patrick examines this tension with regard to the practice of fortune-telling, an example of religious expression “at themargins”: not associatedwith a recognized sect, but nonetheless practiced within the invocation of spirituality (6). The obvious question raised by the practice: To what extent is it fraudulent to offer (and often ask payment for) services to customers promising accurate results, but with no discernible or measurable basis in reality? Furthermore, does it matter to the question of fraud whether the fortune-teller truly believes in his or her own authenticity and does not have the intent to deceive? In an introduction, seven body chapters, and a conclusion, Patrick offers a history of laws covering fortune-telling in four nations (England, Canada, Australia, and the United States), and he thoroughly investigates the legal position of self-identified “spiritual” practitioners holding no affiliation with organized religious bodies (7). Chapter 1 provides a concise consideration of fortune-telling in the context of organized religions. As Patrick notes, despite passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy condemning the practice, its popularity has grown in recent years, most notably with Nancy Reagan’s reliance on psychic advisors while serving as First Lady of the United States (12–14). The next four chapters examine laws regulating the practice, and subsequent court rulings, in England, Canada, Australia, and the United States. English laws on fortune-telling, which provided the template for the other three nations, emerged as early as the 1500s, and banned the practice not on the basis of fraud but because it looked toomuch like witchcraft, and also served as a public nuisance. Punishments included imprisonment and also possibly the death penalty. Laws passed in the 1700s upheld bans on fortune-telling, but reduced the severity of penalties for violations. In Canada, the 1892 Criminal Code banned the use of “occult”methods to find lost objects, regardless of situational context (47–48). A 1954 update to the law tried to tighten the language but instead created ambiguity: It made the criminality of fortune-telling
{"title":"Faith or Fraud: Fortune-Telling, Spirituality, and the Law. By Jeremy Patrick. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2020. Pp. 280. $89.95 (cloth); $32.95 (paper); $32.95 (digital). ISBN: 9780774863322.","authors":"M. Camp","doi":"10.1017/jlr.2022.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2022.20","url":null,"abstract":"As any legal scholar knows, in modern democracies lacking monarchical leaders, no individual right is absolute. Just as the deeply revered right to freedom of speech does not permit one to threaten bodily harm against another person, the individual freedom of religion does not allow an adherent to infringe unreasonably upon the rights of someone else. In his brief but dense Faith or Fraud: Fortune-Telling, Spirituality, and the Law, Jeremy Patrick examines this tension with regard to the practice of fortune-telling, an example of religious expression “at themargins”: not associatedwith a recognized sect, but nonetheless practiced within the invocation of spirituality (6). The obvious question raised by the practice: To what extent is it fraudulent to offer (and often ask payment for) services to customers promising accurate results, but with no discernible or measurable basis in reality? Furthermore, does it matter to the question of fraud whether the fortune-teller truly believes in his or her own authenticity and does not have the intent to deceive? In an introduction, seven body chapters, and a conclusion, Patrick offers a history of laws covering fortune-telling in four nations (England, Canada, Australia, and the United States), and he thoroughly investigates the legal position of self-identified “spiritual” practitioners holding no affiliation with organized religious bodies (7). Chapter 1 provides a concise consideration of fortune-telling in the context of organized religions. As Patrick notes, despite passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy condemning the practice, its popularity has grown in recent years, most notably with Nancy Reagan’s reliance on psychic advisors while serving as First Lady of the United States (12–14). The next four chapters examine laws regulating the practice, and subsequent court rulings, in England, Canada, Australia, and the United States. English laws on fortune-telling, which provided the template for the other three nations, emerged as early as the 1500s, and banned the practice not on the basis of fraud but because it looked toomuch like witchcraft, and also served as a public nuisance. Punishments included imprisonment and also possibly the death penalty. Laws passed in the 1700s upheld bans on fortune-telling, but reduced the severity of penalties for violations. In Canada, the 1892 Criminal Code banned the use of “occult”methods to find lost objects, regardless of situational context (47–48). A 1954 update to the law tried to tighten the language but instead created ambiguity: It made the criminality of fortune-telling","PeriodicalId":44042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Religion","volume":"196 1","pages":"405 - 407"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73231905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This essay examines the interplay between law, Christianity, and oppression in the thought of James Baldwin. This essay begins its inquiry from Baldwin’s own essay, Equal in Paris, and expands out to his broader writing. The essay makes four contributions. First, it shows that Equal in Paris presents a view of law and Christianity as simultaneously serving as instruments and sources of hypocrisy and injustice while representing critically important, if difficult to achieve, standards of justice and love. Second, the essay shows that for Baldwin avoidance and denial of collective moral failure underlies the hypocritical use of law and Christianity to perpetrate injustice rather than justice. Third, the essay reveals that Baldwin would see current legislative bans of critical race theory as a means of avoidance and denial of collective moral failure. Moreover, from a Baldwinian perspective, the maintenance of innocence through bans on critical race theory is a “crime” that typifies the problem at the root of racial oppression in America, which is the refusal to come to terms with the reality of white supremacy. Fourth, while agreeing with scholars who find significant overlap between Baldwin’s approach to law and critical race theory, the essay concludes that Baldwin’s work suggests that critical race theory’s neglect of love constitutes a critical shortcoming for critical race theory’s anti-subordinationist agenda.
摘要本文考察了詹姆斯·鲍德温思想中法律、基督教和压迫三者之间的相互作用。本文从鲍德温自己的文章《平等在巴黎》(Equal in Paris)开始探究，并扩展到他更广泛的写作领域。这篇文章有四个贡献。首先，它表明《巴黎的平等》呈现了一种观点，即法律和基督教同时作为虚伪和不公正的工具和来源，同时代表了至关重要的，即使难以实现的，正义和爱的标准。其次，本文表明鲍德温对集体道德失败的回避和否认是虚伪地利用法律和基督教来实施不公正而不是正义的基础。第三，文章揭示了鲍德温将当前立法禁止批判种族理论视为避免和否认集体道德失败的一种手段。此外，从鲍德温主义的角度来看，通过禁止批判种族理论来维护无辜是一种“犯罪”，它代表了美国种族压迫的根源问题，即拒绝接受白人至上的现实。第四，在同意一些学者发现鲍德温的法律研究方法与批判种族理论之间存在重大重叠的同时，本文得出结论，鲍德温的工作表明，批判种族理论对爱的忽视构成了批判种族理论反从属主义议程的一个关键缺陷。
{"title":"Confronting the Truth: The Necessity of Love for Justice","authors":"Brandon Paradise","doi":"10.1017/jlr.2022.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2022.19","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay examines the interplay between law, Christianity, and oppression in the thought of James Baldwin. This essay begins its inquiry from Baldwin’s own essay, Equal in Paris, and expands out to his broader writing. The essay makes four contributions. First, it shows that Equal in Paris presents a view of law and Christianity as simultaneously serving as instruments and sources of hypocrisy and injustice while representing critically important, if difficult to achieve, standards of justice and love. Second, the essay shows that for Baldwin avoidance and denial of collective moral failure underlies the hypocritical use of law and Christianity to perpetrate injustice rather than justice. Third, the essay reveals that Baldwin would see current legislative bans of critical race theory as a means of avoidance and denial of collective moral failure. Moreover, from a Baldwinian perspective, the maintenance of innocence through bans on critical race theory is a “crime” that typifies the problem at the root of racial oppression in America, which is the refusal to come to terms with the reality of white supremacy. Fourth, while agreeing with scholars who find significant overlap between Baldwin’s approach to law and critical race theory, the essay concludes that Baldwin’s work suggests that critical race theory’s neglect of love constitutes a critical shortcoming for critical race theory’s anti-subordinationist agenda.","PeriodicalId":44042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Religion","volume":"119 1","pages":"232 - 245"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76407423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"JLR volume 37 issue 2 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/jlr.2022.34","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2022.34","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Religion","volume":"410 25","pages":"b1 - b4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72448244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"JLR volume 37 issue 2 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/jlr.2022.33","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2022.33","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Religion","volume":"34 1","pages":"f1 - f5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87800987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Belonging and the sense of belonging are vital factors of human identity, loyalty, and roles, the expectations we have of ourselves and of one another. The boundaries, social and sexual, that all human societies deploy to protect personal privacy and personal and group dignity are modulated by our sense of belonging and often by a complementary sense of difference. The bonds of affinity and the corresponding sense of belonging that modulate our norms and roles are perhaps most visible in the striking colorations they assume in the eyes of outsiders viewing the mores of traditional societies. But the vital necessity of a sense of shared identity is all the more critical when social identities are fragmented by faction, tribalism, or racism, or when anomie and alienation have sapped the sense of commitment that energizes collaborative efforts in any human group. Few dimensions of personal outlook and awareness are more powerful in communal, legal, or political settings than the sense of belonging, that curiously shared identity by which we bind ourselves and one another to shared goals and values in some version of the sense that we are one.
{"title":"Belonging, Identity, and Identification","authors":"L. Goodman","doi":"10.1017/jlr.2022.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2022.6","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Belonging and the sense of belonging are vital factors of human identity, loyalty, and roles, the expectations we have of ourselves and of one another. The boundaries, social and sexual, that all human societies deploy to protect personal privacy and personal and group dignity are modulated by our sense of belonging and often by a complementary sense of difference. The bonds of affinity and the corresponding sense of belonging that modulate our norms and roles are perhaps most visible in the striking colorations they assume in the eyes of outsiders viewing the mores of traditional societies. But the vital necessity of a sense of shared identity is all the more critical when social identities are fragmented by faction, tribalism, or racism, or when anomie and alienation have sapped the sense of commitment that energizes collaborative efforts in any human group. Few dimensions of personal outlook and awareness are more powerful in communal, legal, or political settings than the sense of belonging, that curiously shared identity by which we bind ourselves and one another to shared goals and values in some version of the sense that we are one.","PeriodicalId":44042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Religion","volume":"1 1","pages":"375 - 383"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90256839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract A marked feature of the contemporary U.S. constitutional landscape is the campaign by an Evangelical-Catholic coalition against the idea of secularism, understood by this alliance to mean the exclusion of religion from the state and its progressive marginalization from social life. Departing from the tendency to treat this project as a national phenomenon, this article places it within a longer global genealogy of an earlier international Christian ecumenical effort to combat secularism. The triumph of that campaign culminated in the making of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, now considered the paradigmatic international legal provision on religious liberty. Article 18’s protection of the rights to proselytize and convert, I argue, was a product of an impassioned contestation between an ecumenical movement keen on securing the prerogative to spread the gospel to the non-Christian world and a secularism in a strange alliance with Islam in the region that held the greatest promise for the evangelical enterprise—Muslim Africa. In excavating the genealogy of ecumenical thought as it developed a critique of the so-called secularist threat, I recover the delicate links between the contemporary U.S. anti-secular campaign and the earlier ecumenical efforts.
{"title":"Neutralizing Secularism: Religious Antiliberalism and the Twentieth-Century Global Ecumenical Project","authors":"Rabiat Akande","doi":"10.1017/jlr.2022.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2022.18","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract A marked feature of the contemporary U.S. constitutional landscape is the campaign by an Evangelical-Catholic coalition against the idea of secularism, understood by this alliance to mean the exclusion of religion from the state and its progressive marginalization from social life. Departing from the tendency to treat this project as a national phenomenon, this article places it within a longer global genealogy of an earlier international Christian ecumenical effort to combat secularism. The triumph of that campaign culminated in the making of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, now considered the paradigmatic international legal provision on religious liberty. Article 18’s protection of the rights to proselytize and convert, I argue, was a product of an impassioned contestation between an ecumenical movement keen on securing the prerogative to spread the gospel to the non-Christian world and a secularism in a strange alliance with Islam in the region that held the greatest promise for the evangelical enterprise—Muslim Africa. In excavating the genealogy of ecumenical thought as it developed a critique of the so-called secularist threat, I recover the delicate links between the contemporary U.S. anti-secular campaign and the earlier ecumenical efforts.","PeriodicalId":44042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Religion","volume":"36 1","pages":"286 - 318"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84885330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The first is illustrated by Benjamin Lawrence’s article in this issue of the Journal of Law and Religion: framing the starting point of any constitutional-state relations as entangled, rather than as separated. 4 His account of Buddhist monks in Cambodia seeking exemption from universal suffrage, as supposedly befits their politically neutral status, and the extent to which this is contested on the ground by a number of monks, suggests that one could not start to understand the complex interactions of Buddhism and the state through the lens of secularism as separation, which grew out of the historical context of a powerful church in competition with a powerful state. The study of such regulations would be critical not only for understanding but also for critiquing their impact on religious practices specifically and on society and politics more generally. 5 The methods and impact of state bureaucratization of religion, a form of direct regulation, was aptly explored in the JLR symposium “The Bureaucratization of Religion in Southeast Asia,” guest-edited by JLR co-editor Mirjam Künkler. 6 A regulatory or entanglement framework could further surface the multifarious ways in which religion engages the state beyond the usual, though always important, constitutional claims premised upon equality and freedom of religion. [...]contextualization should be a primary orientation for law and religion scholarship: lived experiences and thick description enrich our understanding of law. [...]to the extent that existing scholarship has employed a Judeo-Christian framework for the study of law and religion—a perspective that tends to emphasize textual authority, voluntary inner faith, and individual rights—the viability of such scholarship requires rethinking.
本杰明·劳伦斯在本期《法律与宗教杂志》上的文章阐述了第一个观点:将任何宪法国家关系的起点视为纠缠在一起，而不是分开的。他对柬埔寨的佛教僧侣寻求免除普选权的描述，据说这符合他们的政治中立地位，而这在一定程度上受到了许多僧侣的质疑，这表明人们无法通过世俗主义的视角来理解佛教和国家之间复杂的相互作用，世俗主义是一种分离，它产生于强大的教会与强大的国家竞争的历史背景。对这些条例的研究不仅对于理解，而且对于批评它们对具体的宗教习俗以及对更普遍的社会和政治的影响都是至关重要的。5 . JLR联合编辑Mirjam k nkler在JLR“东南亚宗教的官僚化”研讨会上，对国家对宗教的官僚化这一直接监管形式的方法和影响进行了恰当的探讨。监管或纠缠框架可以进一步揭示宗教与国家交往的各种方式，这些方式超出了通常的、尽管总是重要的、以宗教平等和自由为前提的宪法要求。[…语境化应该是法律和宗教研究的主要方向:生活经验和丰富的描述丰富了我们对法律的理解。[…在某种程度上，现有的学术研究采用了犹太教-基督教的框架来研究法律和宗教——一种倾向于强调文本权威、自愿的内在信仰和个人权利的观点——这种学术研究的可行性需要重新思考。
{"title":"Law and Religion: Asia as Critical Ground for Rethinking Existing Frameworks and Dominant Paradigms","authors":"Jaclyn L. Neo","doi":"10.1017/jlr.2022.27","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2022.27","url":null,"abstract":"The first is illustrated by Benjamin Lawrence’s article in this issue of the Journal of Law and Religion: framing the starting point of any constitutional-state relations as entangled, rather than as separated. 4 His account of Buddhist monks in Cambodia seeking exemption from universal suffrage, as supposedly befits their politically neutral status, and the extent to which this is contested on the ground by a number of monks, suggests that one could not start to understand the complex interactions of Buddhism and the state through the lens of secularism as separation, which grew out of the historical context of a powerful church in competition with a powerful state. The study of such regulations would be critical not only for understanding but also for critiquing their impact on religious practices specifically and on society and politics more generally. 5 The methods and impact of state bureaucratization of religion, a form of direct regulation, was aptly explored in the JLR symposium “The Bureaucratization of Religion in Southeast Asia,” guest-edited by JLR co-editor Mirjam Künkler. 6 A regulatory or entanglement framework could further surface the multifarious ways in which religion engages the state beyond the usual, though always important, constitutional claims premised upon equality and freedom of religion. [...]contextualization should be a primary orientation for law and religion scholarship: lived experiences and thick description enrich our understanding of law. [...]to the extent that existing scholarship has employed a Judeo-Christian framework for the study of law and religion—a perspective that tends to emphasize textual authority, voluntary inner faith, and individual rights—the viability of such scholarship requires rethinking.","PeriodicalId":44042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Religion","volume":"16 1","pages":"222 - 226"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82360041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract James Baldwin’s autobiographical essay “Equal in Paris” is a perceptive and often amusing account of the American writer’s first visit to Paris. An aspiring novelist who left America in rage over his experience of the country’s injustice and contempt toward Black Americans, Baldwin is acutely aware of racial prejudice in majority white societies. He tells of his experience of staying in a dilapidated hotel, of being wrongly accused of theft and then imprisoned in a Paris jail for more than a week over Christmas. Baldwin’s astute observations of Parisian life and its institutions, show how as a Black American, he struggles to understand this new cultural environment which like most Western societies, has its own form of racism. But this is also a story of an artist’s search for a new intellectual home where he can breathe freely and write. His new friendships with other artists and observations about cosmopolitan European life, allow him to assess what it means to be an American in Paris. This includes exploring those social attitudes that divide America and Europe and those that are universal.
{"title":"Belonging in Exile: James Baldwin in Paris","authors":"Mona Siddiqui","doi":"10.1017/jlr.2022.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2022.17","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract James Baldwin’s autobiographical essay “Equal in Paris” is a perceptive and often amusing account of the American writer’s first visit to Paris. An aspiring novelist who left America in rage over his experience of the country’s injustice and contempt toward Black Americans, Baldwin is acutely aware of racial prejudice in majority white societies. He tells of his experience of staying in a dilapidated hotel, of being wrongly accused of theft and then imprisoned in a Paris jail for more than a week over Christmas. Baldwin’s astute observations of Parisian life and its institutions, show how as a Black American, he struggles to understand this new cultural environment which like most Western societies, has its own form of racism. But this is also a story of an artist’s search for a new intellectual home where he can breathe freely and write. His new friendships with other artists and observations about cosmopolitan European life, allow him to assess what it means to be an American in Paris. This includes exploring those social attitudes that divide America and Europe and those that are universal.","PeriodicalId":44042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law and Religion","volume":"20 1","pages":"246 - 251"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78247039","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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