No Establishment Of Religion

Author : T. Jeremy Gunn,John Witte Jr.
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2012-11-02
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780199986019

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No Establishment of Religion by T. Jeremy Gunn,John Witte Jr. Pdf

The First Amendment guarantee that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" rejected the millennium-old Western policy of supporting one form of Christianity in each nation and subjugating all other faiths. The exact meaning and application of this American innovation, however, has always proved elusive. Individual states found it difficult to remove traditional laws that controlled religious doctrine, liturgy, and church life, and that discriminated against unpopular religions. They found it even harder to decide more subtle legal questions that continue to divide Americans today: Did the constitution prohibit governmental support for religion altogether, or just preferential support for some religions over others? Did it require that government remove Sabbath, blasphemy, and oath-taking laws, or could they now be justified on other grounds? Did it mean the removal of religious texts, symbols, and ceremonies from public documents and government lands, or could a democratic government represent these in ever more inclusive ways? These twelve essays stake out strong and sometimes competing positions on what "no establishment of religion" meant to the American founders and to subsequent generations of Americans, and what it might mean today.

Author : Kent Greenawalt
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2017-06-19
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780674978003

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When Free Exercise and Nonestablishment Conflict by Kent Greenawalt Pdf

“Congress shall make no law reflecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The First Amendment aims to separate church and state, but Kent Greenawalt examines many situations in which its two clauses—the Nonestablishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause—point in opposite directions. How should courts decide?

Author : Leonard W. Levy
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2017-03-01
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781469620435

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The Establishment Clause by Leonard W. Levy Pdf

Leonard Levy's classic work examines the circumstances that led to the writing of the establishment clause of the First Amendment: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. . . .' He argues that, contrary to popular belief, the framers of the Constitution intended to prohibit government aid to religion even on an impartial basis. He thus refutes the view of 'nonpreferentialists,' who interpret the clause as allowing such aid provided that the assistance is not restricted to a preferred church. For this new edition, Levy has added to his original arguments and incorporated much new material, including an analysis of Jefferson's ideas on the relationship between church and state and a discussion of the establishment clause cases brought before the Supreme Court since the book was originally published in 1986.

Author : Kevin Vallier,Michael E. Weber
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2018
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780190666187

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Religious Exemptions by Kevin Vallier,Michael E. Weber Pdf

Religious exemptions have a long history in American law, but have become especially controversial over the last several years. The essays in this volume address the moral and philosophical issues that the legal practice of religious exemptions often raises.

Author : Philip HAMBURGER
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 529 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2009-06-30
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780674038189

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Separation of Church and State by Philip HAMBURGER Pdf

In a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom, Philip Hamburger argues that the separation of church and state has no historical foundation in the First Amendment. The detailed evidence assembled here shows that eighteenth-century Americans almost never invoked this principle. Although Thomas Jefferson and others retrospectively claimed that the First Amendment separated church and state, separation became part of American constitutional law only much later. Hamburger shows that separation became a constitutional freedom largely through fear and prejudice. Jefferson supported separation out of hostility to the Federalist clergy of New England. Nativist Protestants (ranging from nineteenth-century Know Nothings to twentieth-century members of the K.K.K.) adopted the principle of separation to restrict the role of Catholics in public life. Gradually, these Protestants were joined by theologically liberal, anti-Christian secularists, who hoped that separation would limit Christianity and all other distinct religions. Eventually, a wide range of men and women called for separation. Almost all of these Americans feared ecclesiastical authority, particularly that of the Catholic Church, and, in response to their fears, they increasingly perceived religious liberty to require a separation of church from state. American religious liberty was thus redefined and even transformed. In the process, the First Amendment was often used as an instrument of intolerance and discrimination.

Author : Ellis M. West
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2013-05-03
Category : Church and state
ISBN : 0739146785

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The Religion Clauses of the First Amendment by Ellis M. West Pdf

Were the religion clauses of the First Amendment intended to protect individuals' right to religious freedom and equality or the states' traditional right to legislate on religion? This book examines all the arguments and historical evidence relating to this question, and demonstrates, contrary to the views of some scholars and Supreme Court justices, that the clauses were sought, drafted, and originally understood not as guarantees of states' rights but as normative restraints on the national government's power over religion.

Author : Leonard Williams Levy
Publisher : Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 1986
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015011314054

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The Establishment Clause by Leonard Williams Levy Pdf

Leonard Levy's classic work examines the circumstances that led to the writing of the establishment clause of the First Amendment: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. . . .' He argues that, contrary to popular belief, the framers of the Constitution intended to prohibit government aid to religion even on an impartial basis. He thus refutes the view of 'nonpreferentialists, ' who interpret the clause as allowing such aid provided that the assistance is not restricted to a preferred church.For this new edition, Levy has added to his original arguments and incorporated much new material, including an analysis of Jefferson's ideas on the relationship between church and state and a discussion of the establishment clause cases brought before the Supreme Court since the book was originally published in 1986.

Author : David Sehat
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2011-01-14
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0199793115

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The Myth of American Religious Freedom by David Sehat Pdf

In the battles over religion and politics in America, both liberals and conservatives often appeal to history. Liberals claim that the Founders separated church and state. But for much of American history, David Sehat writes, Protestant Christianity was intimately intertwined with the state. Yet the past was not the Christian utopia that conservatives imagine either. Instead, a Protestant moral establishment prevailed, using government power to punish free thinkers and religious dissidents. In The Myth of American Religious Freedom, Sehat provides an eye-opening history of religion in public life, overturning our most cherished myths. Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government, which had limited authority. The Protestant moral establishment ruled on the state level. Using moral laws to uphold religious power, religious partisans enforced a moral and religious orthodoxy against Catholics, Jews, Mormons, agnostics, and others. Not until 1940 did the U.S. Supreme Court extend the First Amendment to the states. As the Supreme Court began to dismantle the connections between religion and government, Sehat argues, religious conservatives mobilized to maintain their power and began the culture wars of the last fifty years. To trace the rise and fall of this Protestant establishment, Sehat focuses on a series of dissenters--abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, socialist Eugene V. Debs, and many others. Shattering myths held by both the left and right, David Sehat forces us to rethink some of our most deeply held beliefs. By showing the bad history used on both sides, he denies partisans a safe refuge with the Founders.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Pelican Publishing
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Church and state
ISBN : 1455604585

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Freedom of Religion, the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court by Anonim Pdf

Author : Jean L. Cohen,Cécile Laborde
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 465 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2015-12-22
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780231540735

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Religion, Secularism, and Constitutional Democracy by Jean L. Cohen,Cécile Laborde Pdf

Polarization between political religionists and militant secularists on both sides of the Atlantic is on the rise. Critically engaging with traditional secularism and religious accommodationism, this collection introduces a constitutional secularism that robustly meets contemporary challenges. It identifies which connections between religion and the state are compatible with the liberal, republican, and democratic principles of constitutional democracy and assesses the success of their implementation in the birthplace of political secularism: the United States and Western Europe. Approaching this issue from philosophical, legal, historical, political, and sociological perspectives, the contributors wage a thorough defense of their project's theoretical and institutional legitimacy. Their work brings fresh insight to debates over the balance of human rights and religious freedom, the proper definition of a nonestablishment norm, and the relationship between sovereignty and legal pluralism. They discuss the genealogy of and tensions involving international legal rights to religious freedom, religious symbols in public spaces, religious arguments in public debates, the jurisdiction of religious authorities in personal law, and the dilemmas of religious accommodation in national constitutions and public policy when it violates international human rights agreements or liberal-democratic principles. If we profoundly rethink the concepts of religion and secularism, these thinkers argue, a principled adjudication of competing claims becomes possible.

Author : John Vile,David Schultz,David Hudson
Publisher : CQ Press
Page : 1464 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2008-09-25
Category : Reference
ISBN : 0872893111

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Encyclopedia Of First Amendment Set by John Vile,David Schultz,David Hudson Pdf

In the first work of its kind, this new and exciting two-volume reference comprehensively examines all the freedoms in the First Amendment, including free speech, press, assembly, petition, and religion. Encyclopedia of the First Amendment covers the political, historical, and cultural significance of the First Amendment. It provides exclusive, singular focus on what most people consider the essential elements of the Bill of Rights and the basic liberties that Americans enjoy.

Author : Joseph Story
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 792 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 1833
Category : Constitutional history
ISBN : UCAL:$B22420

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Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States by Joseph Story Pdf

Author : Ellis M. West
Publisher : Springer
Page : 317 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2019-02-05
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9783030060527

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The Free Exercise of Religion in America by Ellis M. West Pdf

This book explains the original meaning of the two religion clauses of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law [1] respecting an establishment of religion or [2] prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” As the book shows, both clauses were intended to protect the free exercise of religion or religious freedom. West shows the position taken by early Americans on four issues: (1) the general meaning of the “free exercise of religion,” including whether it is different from the meaning of “no establishment of religion”; (2) whether the free exercise of religion may be intentionally and directly limited, and if so, under what circumstances; (3) whether laws regulating temporal matters that also have a religious sanction violate the free exercise of religion; and (4) whether the free exercise of religion gives persons a right to be exempt from obeying valid civil laws that unintentionally and indirectly make it difficult or impossible to practice their religion in some way. A definitive work on the subject and a major contribution to the field of constitutional law and history, this volume is key to a better understanding of the ongoing constitutional adjudication based on the religion clauses of the First Amendment.

Author : Brent Nongbri
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2013-01-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300154177

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Before Religion by Brent Nongbri Pdf

Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Brent Nongbri dispels the commonly held idea that there is such a thing as ancient religion. Nongbri shows how misleading it is to speak as though religion was a concept native to pre-modern cultures.

Author : Ronald Dworkin
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 71 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2013-10-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780674728042

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Religion without God by Ronald Dworkin Pdf

In his last book, Ronald Dworkin addresses questions that men and women have asked through the ages: What is religion and what is God’s place in it? What is death and what is immortality? Based on the 2011 Einstein Lectures, Religion without God is inspired by remarks Einstein made that if religion consists of awe toward mysteries which “manifest themselves in the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, and which our dull faculties can comprehend only in the most primitive forms,” then, he, Einstein, was a religious person. Dworkin joins Einstein’s sense of cosmic mystery and beauty to the claim that value is objective, independent of mind, and immanent in the world. He rejects the metaphysics of naturalism—that nothing is real except what can be studied by the natural sciences. Belief in God is one manifestation of this deeper worldview, but not the only one. The conviction that God underwrites value presupposes a prior commitment to the independent reality of that value—a commitment that is available to nonbelievers as well. So theists share a commitment with some atheists that is more fundamental than what divides them. Freedom of religion should flow not from a respect for belief in God but from the right to ethical independence. Dworkin hoped that this short book would contribute to rational conversation and the softening of religious fear and hatred. Religion without God is the work of a humanist who recognized both the possibilities and limitations of humanity.