Ever since the Enlightenment, scholars in a variety of disciplines have depicted the Western world as growing inexorably more secular. Modern, secular, and scientific modes of thought, they insist, have steadily driven religion out of the public square. Many have portrayed the secularization of the public sphere as not only inevitable but desirable—a Good Thing. In this article, a case study of the New Zealand wars of the 1860s, I question these assumptions. In Victorian New Zealand during this period, settlers and politicians ejected Christianity from the public square for dark and murky reasons. The Enlightenment grand narrative of secular light banishing religious darkness must be seen for what it is: a powerful modern myth whose historical inadequacies ought carefully to be exposed.

Some context for this case study is essential. Up until the 1860s race relations in New Zealand, Britain's southernmost colony, had been mostly peaceful. The indigenous Maori people had generally welcomed Westerners—explorers, whalers, traders, missionaries, and settlers—into New Zealand. These incoming Pakeha (that is, whites in Maori) lived in a Maori world largely on Maori terms. The Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 between many Maori chiefs and the British Crown, guaranteed the tribes full, exclusive, and undisturbed possession of their lands, forests, and fisheries, and all the rights and priveleges of British subjects. In return Maori ceded sovereignty of New Zealand to the Crown. The Treaty required Maori to sell land to the Crown, not private parties.

This is a study of women's rights in Islamic societies, a relatively insignificant subject to the people who live in those societies. The Muslim population of the world is in excess of one billion and approximately one-half of this number, or five hundred million, are female. Geographically, Islam is practiced in all of Arabia, most parts of the Middle East, India, Pakistan, Africa, parts of Spain, and Portugal.

Based on the available literature one may conclude that the Muslims are not particularly interested in this topic. The information that is available is relatively one-sided, expressing the male point of view and his perception of what women's rights ought to be. One reason for this lack of interest is that women, the principal characters, generally lack the formal education necessary for the understanding of their own rights and privileges. Throughout history, there have been very few people willing to advocate this cause. As stated by Dr. Fyzee, a Muslim scholar, the unfortunate position of the women is due to the fact that women, being illiterate, are ignorant of their rights; and men, being callous, choose to remain ignorant.

In another essay being published contemporaneously with this one, I have explained that as the concept “human right” is understood both in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in all the various international human rights treaties that have followed in the Universal Declaration's wake, a right is a human right if the rationale for establishing and protecting the right—for example, as a treaty-based right—is, in part, that conduct that violates the right violates the imperative, articulated in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration, to “act towards all human beings in a spirit of brotherhood.” Each of the human rights articulated in the Universal Declaration and/or in one or more international human rights treaties—for example, the right, articulated in Article 5 of the Universal Declaration and elsewhere, not to be subjected to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”—is a specification of what, in conjunction with other considerations, the imperative—which functions in the morality of human rights as the normative ground of human rights—is thought to forbid (or to require). A particular specification is controversial if and to the extent the supporting claim—a claim to the effect that the “act towards all human beings in a spirit of brotherhood” imperative forbids (or requires) X—is controversial. My aim in this essay is to elaborate and defend a particular specification: the right, internationally recognized as a human right, to freedom of conscience—to freedom, that is, to live one's life in accord with the deliverances of one's conscience.

This article analyzes how concepts of gender, gender equality, and secularism have been addressed by the higher judiciary in India in cases dealing with matters of religion. The discussion focuses on three landmark decisions of the Indian Supreme Court on gender equality. The cases involve challenges to discriminatory religious practices that target women in the Muslim-minority and Hindu-majority communities. In each case, gender equality is taken up in relation to religion in ways that produce several outcomes for women that are problematic rather than ones that are unequivocally progressive or transformative. The judicial reasoning in each case resonates with the Hindu Right's approach to gender, gender equality, and secularism. Each concept is used to advance the Hindu Right's majoritarian and ideological agenda, which seeks to establish India as a virile “Hindu” nation. Ironically, interventions by progressive groups, including feminist and human rights advocates opposed to the Hindu Right's makeover of the Indian nation, have not proved to be disruptive of gender norms; nor have they pushed back the tides of Hindu (male) majoritarianism that are increasingly determining the terms of engagement on issues of gender and faith in law.

In many African societies, gender roles and sexuality are intensely scrutinized, policed, and often enforced. Frequently, this situation results in perceived deviations being characterized in very strong terms. Many Africans across religious and denominational boundaries seem united in their opposition and criticism of same-sex relationships. In the twenty-first century, criminalization of same-sex relationships has witnessed an uptick across the continent. In Nigeria, same-sex union was criminalized in 2014, an act that witnessed massive support from Protestant, especially Pentecostal, Christian communities. Prominent Pentecostal leaders spearheaded the campaign in support and defense of the anti-gay laws in the country. Reasoned opposition to a practice based on religious faith, doctrine, and scriptural prescriptions is an integral aspect of the protection for the practice of religion. However, there is a palpable tension in the debates around rights to free sexual expression as a fundamental element of legally protected human rights and the equally constitutionally embedded right to religious practice, expression, and exercise. At what point, therefore, does the respect for the free exercise of religion and religious expression come into conflict with the respect for, and protection of, minority rights such as claimed rights to sexual expression such as many LGBTQI persons are increasingly contesting? Framed differently, is the verbal and non-verbal promotion of hatred, violence, indignity, and insult or giving offence to a segment of the population based on sexual orientation a part of free religious expression? How do the Pentecostal arguments against same-sex relations in Nigeria approximate to hate speech, defined as a verbal attack on a person or group of persons based on their attributes such as gender and sexual orientation, religion, or ethnicity? To analyze these and related issues, this essay examines the arguments used by the leader of the largest Pentecostal organization in Nigeria—and by far, the most important Pentecostal voice in the country—in the wake of the legal prohibition of homosexuality in Nigeria in 2014.

The last decade of the 20th century has brought ferment and change in the American constitutional law concerning religious liberty. Change has come on several fronts. Throughout the 1990s, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Congress have battled over the scope of the right to free exercise of religion. First the Court narrowed the right dramatically, then Congress responded with a statute “restoring” the previous broader standard, only to see the Court invalidate the statute within four years. In addition, the prospect of full-blown government aid to religiously affiliated schools and other institutions came much closer to reality by 2000, as the Supreme Court grew more approving of such aid and as cities and states dissatisfied with the performance of public schools and government welfare agencies turned to assisting private and “faith-based” organizations as alternatives.

In 1920 James Brown Scott, the celebrated teacher, international law scholar and practitioner, published his pioneering book The United States of America: A Study in International Organization. His underlying thesis was that the historic evolution of the United States provided a model for the development of international organizations in which local sovereignty and autonomy are preserved but “a more perfect union” is sought. Scott made the distinction that the delegates to the Federal Convention of 1787 did not merge the States in a union, “but formed a union of States.” One of Scott's goals was to provide the delegates who would be convening at The Hague the imagination to consider a “Society of Nations” as a frame of reference that could guide their post-Great War deliberations. As he said:

In November 1963, John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic President of the United States of America, was assassinated while travelling in a motorcade through the streets of Dallas, Texas.

The election of Kennedy was a significant moment in relations between religion and public life in this nation for, although Catholics were physically present on the continent over a century before Protestant's, the Protestant spirit clearly dominated the newly formed nation in positions of political and economic power well into the twentieth century.

But the death of Kennedy was also a significant moment, a moment in which religious sentiments and public concerns were fused. The grief that was felt nationwide betrayed depths of religious emotion usually reserved for the intimate spaces of family life. But this was the grief of a body politic for one in whose office the entire community, however otherwise divided, was symbolized. Moreover, the funeral, stately and elegant, came as close as any other event in the history of America to being a national religious ritual, even if conducted for many only through the conveyance of electronic media.

The fact that covenant played a central role in the religious life of ancient Israel has long been recognized by historians, theologians and other careful leaders of the biblical text. Walther Eichrodt's monumental Theology of the Old Testament remains perhaps the best known and most extensive treatment of covenant themes in the Hebrew Bible. But in recent years biblical scholars and theologians as diverse as Jon Levenson, James Muilenberg, Eugene Borowitz, Rosemary Ruether and David Hartman have increasingly devoted their attention to the concept of covenant, both its biblical roots and its persistence as a central category of religious life for Jews and Christians into the modern era.

Yet, the implications of covenant for Jewish ethics have not received the attention they merit. To be sure, it is universally acknowledged that Jews, traditionally speaking, have understood their religious obligations within the context of the covenantal relationship between God and Israel. And some have noted that, as a consequence of this, Jewish ethics are addressed to members of a covenanted community, rather than to autonomous individuals. Some have also explored the tensions within the covenant idea between particularism and universalism, while others have distinguished between the conditional and unconditional dimensions of the covenantal relationship. Still, there has been no systematic effort to correlate the category of covenant in all its richness and subtlety with diverse streams within Jewish ethics.

Among the many individuals and groups espousing affiliation with the Moorish Science Temple of America movement, some continue founding prophet Noble Drew Ali's emphasis on engaging in American citizenship as a religious duty, while others interpret the prophet's scriptures to lend authority to claims of being outside the jurisdiction of American legal authority. Such sovereign Moors, whose actions range from declaration of secession to rejection of drivers or marriage licenses, advance legal discourse rooted in historical narratives, tailor their legal thinking toward practical instruction and efficacious results, and appeal to etymology to further authorize their claims. Such sovereign Moorish legal discourse is best understood, following Catherine Wessinger's work on the Montana Freemen, as “magical,” and understanding the magical role played by legal texts and discourse within these communities can help scholars and legal professionals in their approach to and interactions with sovereign Moors.

A remarkable phenomenon in the history of Western political and legal thought is the emergence of so-called sixteenth-century Calvinist resistance theory. Groups of intellectuals, committed to the theology of John Calvin and seeing the Reformed churches of their homelands oppressed by hostile monarchs, stepped beyond the rather strict obedience that Calvin commended toward civil authority and advocated various degrees of civil disobedience and even revolution. Two early and famous expressions of Calvinist resistance theory were from the “Marian exiles,” British Calvinists on the continent who fled the persecution of Bloody Mary Tudor in the 1550s, and the French Huguenots who wrote in the aftermath of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572. Scholars have made impressive claims about these writers. Many perceive in their work a major turning point in political and legal theory and identify it as a key source for the development of Western revolutionary thinking and modernization more generally.

In liberal democracies with religiously diverse populations, it would be surprising and troubling if a judge relied on a religious text or precept to resolve a legal dispute. It would deeply offend principles of religious freedom if individuals were bound by judicial pronouncement to obey the dictates of a faith they do not share. However, some commentators have long claimed that a person's cultural worldview has an impact on the way they interpret laws and facts, and there is some empirical support for this claim. There is thus reason to expect that judges’ worldviews have some effect on their decision-making. I argue that when judges deliberately avoid engaging with their own moral perspectives, they may mask to themselves the impact that such perspectives have on their decisions. The alternative of explicit reference to religious sources in judicial decisions, however, is too problematic for the religious freedom of legal subjects. I argue that judges should instead endeavor to be conscious of the influence their backgrounds have on their decision-making, but suggest that judicial institutions may be resistant to adopting practices that would support such an approach. The article draws on Canadian and American case law to demonstrate its argument but has wider applicability to liberal states.

The Jewish marriage differs from the Catholic Christian marriage, which is an institution surrounded by the halo of a holy sacrament that cannot be nullified. It also differs from the Islamic marriage, which is closer to a legal agreement than to a sacrament, wherein the husband alone may annul the marriage, either unilaterally or by mutual consent. This is especially true of the Shi'ite marriage—the muta—which may be annulled without any divorce proceedings at a predetermined date. In this article, I present a little-known possible halakhic stipulation: temporary marriage. I consider its roots and the different applications in Talmudic sources. An example of the Babylonian application of this conditional marriage is the cry by important Babylonian amoraim, “Who will be mine for a day?” In this unique case, some of the halakhic authorities rule that there is no necessity for a get in order to terminate the marriage. I consider the early halakhic rulings on these cases and the modern version of this stipulation, which was also rejected by modern halakhic authorities. I also offer a comparative study of a possible parallel to the marriage for a predetermined period, the Shi'ite temporary marriage, which is intentionally restricted to an agreed period of time and does not require divorce to annul it. I conclude my discussion by revealing the possible common roots for the Jewish temporary marriage and the Shi'ite temporary marriage in ancient Persian law.

In my book, Pro-Justice Ethics, I define justice as an act of protesting, preventing, and remedying situations that arouse a sense of injustice. Formally, injustice is the violation of fairness, equality, and dignity; and the experience of injustice activates the justice imperative: “Act so as to promote justice in all situations for all times and places.” The beginning of ethical theory is the critique of injustice.

In this essay, I examine current situations of freshwater scarcity from the standpoint of pro-justice ethics. Water scarcity means that the amount of water withdrawn from rivers, lakes, or aquifers is so great that existing water supplies cannot satisfy human and ecosystem requirements. This essay (1) surveys factors of freshwater scarcity, (2) exposes the injustices of corporate water privatization, (3) discusses the concept of sacramental commons in the context of public trust doctrines, and (4) argues for a human right to water in relation to the intrinsic value of water in nature.

This essay explores judicial responses to legal restrictions on worship during the COVID-19 pandemic and draws two lessons, one comparative and one relating specifically to U.S. law. As a comparative matter, courts across the globe have approached the problem in essentially the same way, through intuition and balancing. This has been the case regardless of what formal test applies, the proportionality test outside the United States, which expressly calls for judges to weigh the relative costs and benefits of a restriction, or the Employment Division v. Smith test inside the United States, which rejects judicial line-drawing and balancing in favor of predictable results. Judges have reached different conclusions about the legality of restrictions, of course, but doctrinal nuances have made little apparent difference. With respect to the United States specifically, the pandemic has revealed deep divisions about religion and religious freedom, among other things—divisions that have inevitably influenced judicial attitudes toward restrictions on worship. The COVID-19 crisis has revealed a cultural and political rift that makes consensual resolution of conflicts over religious freedom problematic, and perhaps impossible, even during a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Biblical law is a complex concept that contains several distinct legal currents. In an effort to explore the interplay of these currents, this article first focuses on the overlap between the biblical law of God and the strictly legal regulations of the Old Testament. It then unpacks the principles and inner rationalities of what is termed “archaic law” and shows that this law is connected with regulations that could be termed “mercy laws” and with cultic regulations. By extrapolating the normative dynamics between these three codes of the law, the article exposes the enormous moral, religious, and legal influence of biblical law in general and of the mercy code in particular. In this way, the article reveals a backbone of our occidental culture. The interdependence of justice and mercy drives societies and cultures to search for (humane) justice in a deep and truth-bound way and, further, to routinize social care and welfare beyond the boundaries of families and tribal relations. The article finally illuminates both commonalities and differences between mercy and a deep and encompassing understanding of love.

Happiness is an essential goal of all people. Because happiness is so fundamentally part of our being, the question of how to attain it is of great importance. Buddhism has a long and well-developed philosophical and practical tradition with the goal of helping humans to attain happiness and end suffering. In this article, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama draws on the wisdom of the Buddhist tradition to explain how one can achieve happiness by transforming the mind. In particular, His Holiness explains how, in the Buddhist tradition, there is a special instruction called Mind Training, which focuses on cultivating concern for others and turning adversity to advantage that can be of great benefit to people seeking to end suffering and cultivate happiness.

This article analyzes the relation between Confucianism and Chinese politics in the history, actuality, and future. The focus is on the special relationship between Confucianism and Chinese politics. First, the author provides a brief historical reflection on the relationship between Confucianism and Chinese traditional politics and develops three dimensions for such an interpretation. Second, the author explains the need for a Confucian renaissance in contemporary Chinese politics. The article then turns to the contemporary controversy about Confucianism and Chinese politics in mainland China. Jiang Qing's conception of Confucianism as state religion is then juxtaposed with Chen Ming's articulation of Confucianism as civil religion. In conclusion, the author argues that Confucianism should serve as an ethical resource for the state constitution, as well as a resource for social governance and cultivation.

This article analyzes the origins of the concept of symphonia, its historical development, and its utilization by the Russian Orthodox Church as a normative ideal for church-state relations. In various historical contexts, this concept has referred to different normative requirements; it relied on different paradigms in Byzantium and in medieval Russia and it acquired new meanings in Imperial Russia. The reinterpretations of this concept by the Russian Orthodox Church in order to legitimize its position in the political life of contemporary Russia take this concept far from its original meaning. Using methods from the history of concepts of, among others, Reinhart Koselleck and Quentin Skinner, the author considers how the semantic transformations of symphonia in modern contexts by the Russian Orthodox Church lead to a hollowing of this concept. This conception is hardly reconcilable with the normative logic of the actual Russian political and legal systems.