At the center of Muslim life sits The Qur'an — the Recitation — scripture for Muslims. Islamic dress, though understood intimately and expressed culturally by Muslims, seems to pose several dilemmas in the U.S. Yet, the most used translation of The Qur'an states:

Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty: that will make for greater purity for them: And Allah is well acquainted with what they do.

And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty: that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof: that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their fathers, their husband's fathers, their sons, their husband's sons, their brother or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their women, or the slaves their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex: and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments. And O you believers! Turn all toward Allah that you may attain bliss.

Religion and politics create volatile issues in many parts of the world and have been intensely debated in America. Recent charges and counter-charges about “godless humanists” and “religious zealots” have been heated. With an election campaign underway, the subject of religion in public life remains a potential iceberg issue of 1988 — massive but submerged. On the eve of the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights, it is plain that controversies about religion in public life are as lively and potent today as when the First Amendment was being debated nearly 200 years ago.

But how do the American people view the place of religion in public life today? Is there a vital knowledge of the Constitution? Where do Americans currently draw the line between church and state? Are there significant limits to tolerance? Are there important differences between the general public and key leadership groups? Is there less religious tolerance today than 20 or 30 years ago?

To answer such questions and help assess the state of the union regarding religion and public life, the Williamsburg Charter Foundation commissioned a nationwide opinion survey. The purpose of the study was to learn how people view these issues 200 years into the American experiment. The motive was not to find out simply what the majority wants changed or restricted. After all, the Bill of Rights was written to guarantee the rights of minorities against the will of the majority.

The subject of religion and human rights is something in which I have more than academic or professional interest. It is true I have invested considerable time and energy to the question throughout my scholarly life. In recent years, I have paid special attention to the more practical aspects—namely, the degree to which states and other actors have actually complied with the standards of religious freedom and equality enshrined in the international human rights documents. At the same time, I have come to see that my efforts in this area are not “value-free;” in fact, they express a deeper worldview that, for better or worse, I hold and am pleased to avow. In this article I attempt to lay out the sources and features of that worldview.

As it happens, I am a committed Presbyterian layman, and have served at various times as an officer in that church. That means I stand in what is known as the “Reformed” tradition of Protestant Christianity, which stems from the sixteenth-century French theologian and religious leader, John Calvin (1509-1564). Calvin's general approach is summarized by the motto, ecclesia reformata semper reformanda—”the church reformed, ever reforming.” Those words signal Calvin's strong concern for church life and organization, both as an expression of Christian commitment, and as a model for social and political life. Moreover, the motto implies Calvin's characteristic emphasis on the obligation of Christians to act out their beliefs in institutional and practical ways.

In a familiar passage, R.H. Tawney has spoken of the transformation of natural law in the seventeenth century—an age in which the concept of “Nature” came to “connote not divine ordinance, but human appetites, and natural rights were invoked by the individualism of the age as a reason why self-interest should be given free play.” “Natural rights” replaced “natural law” in the context of an ongoing inquiry into the sources and limits of political authority. Central to this discussion remains the enigmatic figure of John Locke. A common refrain in the literature identifies Locke—that many-faceted “man in whose name the American Revolution was made, … the man above all whom hysterical conservatives all over Europe would blame for the collapse of the Ancien Régime”—as, in addition, a religious thinker whose Christianity colors the entire fabric of his political philosophy; as, even more specifically, the “heir of puritan political theorists.” In this vein, at least one writer has ventured to connect Locke with a now largely forgotten piece of 17th century political theory, Lex, Rex, the work of puritan pastor, theologian and political controversialist, Samuel Rutherford. The general impression seems to be that Locke's Calvinist upbringing places him in a long line of Reformed Christian resistance theorists. On the other hand, Lex, Rex has been called “a deeply Thomistic book” for its close adherence to natural law principles in the scholastic tradition.

Those who come before a judge do not really know before whom they stand. The person who presides over the courtroom, cloaked in the solemn black robes of his or her office, is in that moment less an individual than a symbol of democratic values and an instrument of state power. In recognition of that power and authority, all rise as the judge enters the courtroom and takes the seat, elevated above everyone else in the room, from which justice will be dispensed. It is the hope of all, and the conviction of most, that this individual will do his or her job well, dispensing what is perhaps our most precious social good—justice. What no one knows, what no one is even permitted to ask, is the character of the person wearing that robe and the ways in which that individual's personal qualities will affect the performance of his or her duties.

Ethical discussions of divorce have usually taken up the question of whether or when two spouses may divorce and remarry. They have focussed on the dissolution of the marital bond. Almost no attention has been given to the ethical issues involved in negotiating a divorce or maintaining the parental bond in divorce.

Emerging efforts to maintain parental bonds in divorce rest on many diverse considerations. Let us begin with the social changes demanding this concern and then move to some religious, ethical, and legal responses to this challenge.

After delivering a Carlson Lecture at the University of Minnesota in 1994, Hannan Ashrawi was asked by an audience member if a newly formed, independent State of Palestine would adopt the Sharīa (Islamic law) as the law of the land. The question reveals a deep seated fear in the American mind about Islamic justice. Because Islamic concepts of law and justice have developed from a very different worldview, they seem incomprehensible to us. We don't understand why Muslims argue about theology when talking about legal cases that appear in the news.

The Islamic community is organized as a theocracy, where God is the ruler of the community. In such a community, there is very little doubt that God is the ultimate authority in all things, including questions of law. There might, however, be considerable doubt about how the human members of the community respond to, make use of, and/or interpret God's intentions. Islam is no exception to this rule. Throughout its history, groups of people have answered questions about God and the community in different ways.

For two centuries the American dream has flourished on the revolutionary notion that a united people can actually live with and even thrive on its deepest differences.

We are a diverse lot. This is one of our great strengths as a nation. Even with time our individual distinctiveness does not wane. We relish, enrich and continue to celebrate our diversity — our multiple heritages, the cacophony and splendor of our earlier languages and customs, our myriad ethnic and racial differences. We are Everyman. Any citizen of this world can find here a common thread of identification linking himself or herself to our society.

To provide world leadership, to prosper, even to long exist as a coherent nation, we as a people must respect and preserve this notion of living with our deepest differences. It was at the heart of our forefathers' genius in conceiving and establishing this government of the people, by the people and for the people. Nowhere is this idea more critical or central to our national well-being than in the domain of religious liberty. It was for this reason that the Williamsburg Charter Foundation came into being as a core unit in the Bicentennial celebration of our U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

The subject of this essay is the developing work of Thomas Shaffer, the Notre Dame Law School legal ethicist. For over two decades, Shaffer has displayed a remarkable ability to bring to his area of specialization the influences of a rich variety of extra-legal sources. Readers encounter neo-orthodox and narrative theology; biblical studies; the nineteenth century novel of manners and sensibility (especially Trollope); material from film, stage and television; the deviance theory of Kai Erikson; the history and sociology of later immigrant cultures in America; C.P. Snow and C.S. Lewis; Martin Buber's understanding of I-Thou relations; the history of British and American legal-ethical concepts. Yet the very interdisciplinary scope of Shaffer's writing places it at risk. When technically impressive micro-studies carry the day, magistrally broad efforts like his often receive scant attention. To encourage the opposite result—a thorough engagement by legal scholars and ethicists—this analysis is offered.

Though freedom of religion remains one of our most cherished values, it is still among the most controversial of constitutional rights. This is especially true in the context of military service. Even those who purposefully enlist in the armed forces, implicitly giving up certain liberties they freely enjoyed as civilians, would not relinquish their freedom of conscience. Yet the right to practice their religious beliefs, unfettered by arbitrary governmental restrictions, is regularly challenged.

Fortunately, however, most western cultures regard religious liberty as so fundamental that their military establishments routinely develop regulations to accommodate specific religious practices.

This principle was of particular import in the recent conflict in the Persian Gulf, during which the American government sought to limit the conduct of its military personnel so as not to offend the religious sensibilities of fundamentalist Arabs, specifically the host nation of Saudi Arabia. To what extent such political and strategic restrictions impinge upon basic constitutional principles is a question that has not yet been fully explored.

The passage in the Williamsburg Charter referring to two questions — “how we view the place of religion in American life and how we should contend with each other's deepest differences in the public sphere” — opens two lines of inquiry. First, I understand the “we” in the passage to refer at least in part to the religious communities; from this follows the need to assess how these communities understand their exercise of religious and moral authority (power) in the public arena. Second, the passage is also open to an investigation of the exercise of power in our national life. Presumably the religious communities contend among themselves and with other institutions in the evaluation of how power is exercised in the name of the nation.

In his article “Gender Identity Discrimination and Freedom of Religion,” Patrick Parkinson raises the important question of how the government should reconcile conflicts between the rights of religious people and the rights of transgender and gender-nonconforming people. By focusing on whether gender identity is best defined as a medical issue or a belief system, however, Parkinson does little to answer it. Whether gender identity is a medical issue may be relevant to determining the sincerity of an individual’s faith-based objection to complying with an antidiscrimination law. It has no bearing, however, on the strength of trans and gender-nonconforming individuals’ countervailing interest in being protected from discrimination. Defining gender identity as a belief system does no more to undermine this interest. This should be apparent to defenders of religious exemptions, who assert that belief systems offer a basis for extending, rather than contracting, legal protections. Characterizing an individual’s gender identity as either a medical issue or a belief system thus does not show why that individual’s interests should give way to the interests of religious objectors through an exemption. To reach this conclusion, one must instead turn to other values, such as those implicit—though inadequately defended—in Parkinson’s article.

This article surveys the evolution of the Catholic Church's official response to same-sex relations over the last two centuries. While the church has not altered its condemnation of same-sex relations, the justifications it offers for this negative judgment have shifted substantially, and they have moved, especially recently, in a direction that makes possible the acceptance of same-sex relations at some future—and perhaps not too-distant—date. This article explores the manualist tradition of the nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries; twentieth-century developments in canon law; and the period of retrenchment and reaction under popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Its final section looks at developments under Pope Francis. It closes by considering the way the church's teaching shifted over the course of its history—penance and the forgiveness of sins; anti-Semitism; and the sin against natural-law of taking interest on a loan (usury). It proposes that we might witness the church undergo a similar shift on same-sex relations.

This socio-legal narrative investigates the journey from “biological” to “societal” filiation undertaken by Islamic and international law regimes in their endeavors to ensure a child's right to name and identity. Combining a discussion of filiation—a status-assigning process—with adoption and kafāla (fostering) as status-transferring mechanisms, it highlights a nuanced hierarchy relating to these processes within Muslim communities and Muslim state practices. It questions whether evolving conceptions of a child's rights to name and identity represent a paradigm shift from “no status” if born out of wedlock toward “full status” offered through national and international law and Muslim state and community practices. The article challenges the dominant (formal, legal) position within the Islamic legal traditions that nasab (filiation) is obtainable through marriage alone. Highlighting inherent plurality within the Islamic legal traditions, it demonstrates how Muslim state practice and actual practices of Muslim communities on the subject are neither uniform nor necessarily in accordance with stated doctrinal positions of the juristic schools to which they subscribe. Simultaneously, the paper challenges some exaggerated gaps between “Islamic” and “Western” conceptions of children's rights, arguing that child-centric resources in Islamic law tend to be suppressed by a “universalist” Western human-rights discourse. Tracing common threads through discourses within both legal traditions aimed at ensuring children a name and identity, it demonstrates that the rights values in the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child resonate with preexisting values within the Islamic legal traditions.

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.

The last decade has seen the publication in North America of a plethora of academic books and articles about polygamy. The most important texts on the subject, however, are two court rulings evaluating the constitutionality of criminal prohibitions against the practice of polygamy. Informed by and in dialogue with this academic discourse, these courts arrived at dramatically different conclusions. In Reference re s. 293 of the Criminal Code of Canada, the Supreme Court of British Columbia determined that while Mormon fundamentalist polygamists had religious freedom rights under Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to practice this aspect of their bona fide religious faith, the government of Canada was justified in limiting this right under Section 1 of the Charter. Prohibiting polygamy was necessary, the court found, in order to prevent the real and substantial risk of harm that it posed to women and children.1 Conversely, in the United States, a trial-level court in Utah issued a summary judgment finding that a criminal prohibition against polygamous religious marriages violated the rights to freedom of religion under the First Amendment, and due process rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. This judgment focused on the state's duty to tolerate minority religious practices, while downplaying the potential risks of polygamy to practitioners and their children.2

Forgiveness and mercy are often thought of as acts that we perform or gifts that we bestow. In this essay the author focuses on character and explores the implications for punishment if one focuses on having a character that is merciful and forgiving in disposition. He argues that the tension that is often thought to exist between justice, on the one hand, and forgiveness and mercy, on the other, is lessened by focusing on the virtue of having a forgiving and merciful character.