Re: Protestants and non-Protestants
And isn't that exactly what deTocqueville said he found? Ed Darrell Dallas"A.E. Brownstein" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Marci, of course, is more than capable of speaking for herself. But I would think that the reference to religious "intensity of belief" that thrives in an environment of religious neutrality may relate to the inspiration and energy many religious groups experience in a regime of religious voluntarism -- where the success of faith-based congregations and communities depends on the personal commitment of religious individuals and associations and the power of their beliefs, rather than their ability to use the government to communicate self affirming messages or to subsidize their activities.Alan BrownsteinUC DavisAt 04:33 PM 3/4/2005 -0600, you wrote:Tom: I like the term, and I don't think it's so ugly as you suggest.Marci: Do you think it is empirically true that, as you say, "The more the government is constrained to be neutral with respect to religion over the years, the more diversity and intensity of belief this society expresses"? I suppose I might agree with the diversity point, but intensity I would agree with only in a very limited sense. Thus, I think Tom is right about the secularizing "slippery slope," if you will (to use a favored phrase of our esteemed moderator). In addition, much of the public square agitating is clearly a response to what are taken to be hostile governmental -- let's face it, mostly judicial -- rulings.Richard Dougherty[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:Tom-- Thanks very much for your thoughtful answer. I completely agree with you on the first point. As a matter of fact, I think there is very little likelihood that this society can be secularized by government or any other entity. The more the governmen! t is constrained to be neutral with respect to religion over the years, the more diversity and intensity of belief this society expresses. The public square (which is to be distinguished from government space) is filled with religious ideas, political activity, and lobbying. Thus, I view the "secularization" thesis (used to justify government financial and other support for religion) as a myth at best, and a cover for intense political activity at worst, which is why I asked for clarification on what you meant by artificial secularization.MarciTom-- Thanks very much for your thoughtful answer. I completely agree with you on the first point. As a matter of fact, I think there is very little likelihood that this society can be secularized by government or any other entity. The more the government is constrained to be neutral with respect to religion over the years, the more diversity and intensity of belief this society expresses. The public square (which is to be distinguished from government space) is filled with religious ideas, political activity, and lobbying.Thus, I view the "secularization" thesis (used to justify government financial and other support for religion) as a myth at best, and a cover for intense political activity at worst, which is why I asked for clarification on what you meant by artificial secularization. Marci(1) The belief that government is having this secularizing effect, and that itâ s a problem, is (rightly or wrongly) held by people across varying faiths, not just by evangelical Protestants. (2) To ensure that a secular government doesnâ t secularize society, government can take steps to preserve a vigorous private sector in religion.___To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.eduTo subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlawPlease note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.___To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.eduTo subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlawPlease note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.___To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.eduTo subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlawPlease note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To
Ten Commandments Cases
Jack Balkin's prediction: http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/03/my-prediction-on-ten-commandments-case.html ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
Re: Protestants and non-Protestants
Does it matter that the government is not actually openly hostile to religion? Or is the relevant inquiry really is seen by many? Steven Jamar On Saturday, March 5, 2005, at 09:12 AM, Richard Dougherty wrote: Well, yes, but not in a political order where the government -- especially the judiciary -- is seen by many as openly hostile to religion; this is a very different America from the one Tocqueville observed. Richard Dougherty -- Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox: 202-806-8017 Howard University School of Law fax: 202-806-8428 2900 Van Ness Street NW mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Washington, DC 20008 http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/jamar Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think. - Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963 ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
RE: Ten Commandments: My Prediction
Title: Message I define discrimination against religion as treating people or organizations worse because they are religious. (I don't think anything I have said suggests that discrimination means "denying [a group] permission to do something that it wants to do.") The systematic exclusion of religious institutions from access to generally available programs strikes me as discrimination; except in a few circumstances, it seems to me to be quite reprehensible, and fits well into my understanding of "bullying." It's even discrimination when it discriminates against the "aggressive, pushy, and persistent," who it seems to me have the same free speech and equal treatment rights as the mild-mannered. Now Prof. Newsom may believe that the discrimination I describe is in fact constitutionally mandated; I disagree. But such discrimination has indeed been a large project of the Atheist, Agnostic, Jewish, and Secularist Conspiracy, which has indeed had tremendous influence in educational and legal elite circles, though I agree that it has had less influence in the public as a whole. And of course not only Atheists, Agnostics, Jews, and Secularists do the work of the Atheist, Agnostic, Jewish, and Secularist Conspiracy. I'm pleased to hear that the "Protestant Empire label" is "neither crude nor belligerent"; I'm sure that it isn't "aggressive, pushy, and persistent," either. Eugene -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Newsom MichaelSent: Friday, March 04, 2005 1:53 PMTo: Law Religion issues for Law AcademicsSubject: RE: Ten Commandments: My Prediction The cases you refer to dont capture the social reality of religious bullying. They dont gainsay the point made by Alley and by Barner-Barry. You have to show that they have it wrong. Citing four or five cases doesnt do the job. Whether you mean to or not, you are minimizing the claims made by these authorities, without even meeting their arguments head on. This attempt to minimize is neither effective nor helpful in understanding the nature of the problem at hand. Second, I dont think that these cases constitute bullying because they dont involve intimidation. You appear to minimize the impact or consequence of bullying, draping the mantle of free speech over it. Defending or minimizing bullying is problematic. Third, I am not sure that discrimination is a fair characterization of what happened in these cases, or at least some of them. I dont start from the baseline that denying religion A permission to do something that it wants to do is necessarily discrimination against religion A As you appear to use the term, the United States government discriminated against the Mormons in Reynolds. I would agree that the United States government bullied the Mormons, singled them out with the intention of forcing Mormons underground or to change their views on plural marriage. But to say that the Mormons were discriminated against would be most unhelpful. Fourth, if you read my writings carefully, you will see that I have never claimed that only Protestants do the work of the Protestant Empire. I have merely claimed that when it comes to bullying, in the post Engel/Schempp era, most of the bullying (and I dont mean discrimination, certainly not as you appear to use the term), has been done by evangelical Protestants, and I offer up as authority the detailed scholarly works of Alley and Barner-Barry. Fifth, how do you know that the bad guys in the cases you cite were not Protestants? Again, if you read my work carefully, I have never claimed that Protestants always agreed with each other, particularly at the level of tactics and strategy. Sixth (and related to the third point), some religious groups are more aggressive, pushy and persistent than others. Obviously some people are going to try to restrain pushy groups on the grounds that their very aggressiveness interferes with the constitutionally protected rights of their targets. Is that discrimination? (If it is, then I take it that you would say that Engel and Schempp, or at least some of their progeny, were wrongly decided.) Seventh (more on discrimination), I do not accept the proposition that religious speech is just like any other speech and should be treated the same way. Such a view guts the Religion Clauses. Eighth, if you look carefully at some of the studies of the religious affiliation of Americans, you will find that (including African-Americans) evangelical Protestants constitute a majority of the population of the United States. Ninth, there is no historical or experiential basis for equating Protestants and Atheists (or Jews or Secularists for that matter). The Protestant Empire label is neither crude nor
Re: Religious Neutrality and Voluntarism
Even if Marci won't I will. It is not a widespread pattern of suppression. And that some schools made mistakes does not show governmental or court hostitility. Furthermore, it was the courts who let the religion back into the schools when the schools went overboard. I think most of the problems stemmed from the typical (herein comes group slander) political hack attorneys often hired by school boards not for their constitutional acumen, but for their political connections. They did not know nor care to learn the law in this admittedly arcane area and so they gave the wrong conservative counsel sort of advice. There has been in my experience a lot more of the prayer in school advocacy than the exclusion of religious activity. And a lot more ban the book activity by religious groups than ban the religion activity. But these are, of course, just impressions, based on what is at best spotty news coverage and where one lives. And I hope Eugene was tongue in cheek on his conspiracy stuff. Steve On Saturday, March 5, 2005, at 07:04 PM, Berg, Thomas C. wrote: Marci -- I agree that some religious activism in, say, public schools is an attempt to promote a religious orthodoxy and discourage religious diversity, perhaps in response to a perceived loss of cultural power. Daily school-sponsored prayers were an attempt to do that on behalf of a generic theism or Judeo-Christian theism. (Official graduation prayers look less like a systematic orthodoxy precisely because are one-time rather than repeated events, but even an orthodoxy at one important event is an orthodoxy.) But we can't also deny that some religious anger at the public schools stems from a real pattern of suppression of individuals' religious practices in the name of a secular orthodoxy. For example, the Equal Access Act was a reaction to repeated instances of schools forbidding religious student groups to meet while allowing a host of other groups to meet. Even after the Act passed, it took another decade of Supreme Court decisions to forbid such exclusion of private religious activity in situations outside the spectific terms of the Act. These were not just isolated instances, but a widespread pattern of suppression by people who mischaracterized free religious activity in a public setting as a brand of establishment. Do you debate that point? Tom Berg, University of St. Thomas School of Law, Minneapolis image.tiff> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sat 3/5/2005 3:57 PM To: religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu Subject: Re: Religious Neutrality and Voluntarism I was making a more historical, sociological point. There is a parallel historical development between the development of the disestablishment doctrine toward a nonendorsement principle and an explosion in diversity. The two reinforce each other, and the fact of such diversity makes the arguments for a Christian culture or even a Judeo-Christian culture increasingly hollow. I'm not sure what the disagreement is on intensity. By most sociological markers, the U.S. has a more intense set of religious citizens than Europe, to state it mildly. It is also more intense than the U.S. observed at the time of the framing. Statistically, more people attend church and more people profess religious belief (though, of course, those beliefs cover a far broader spectrum). There is quite fertile sociological and anthropological work to be done on the co-presence of these three factors: diversity, disestablishment or nonendorsement, and a religious culture that is quite enthusiastic and devout. The public square agitating is not in my view solely or even largely a response to the courts but rather a political play of power. It is more of a reaction to diversity and the reduction in numbers and proportional power of Christians and in particular Protestants. Within several years, Protestants will no longer constitute over 50% of the country. As with all religious movements, a felt loss of power can trigger a lot of political activity. Marci Marci: Do you think it is empirically true that, as you say, The more the >government is constrained to be neutral with respect to religion over the >years, the more diversity and intensity of belief this society >expresses? I suppose I might agree with the diversity point, but >intensity I would agree with only in a very limited sense. Thus, I think >Tom is right about the secularizing slippery slope, if you will (to use >a favored phrase of our esteemed moderator). In addition, much of the >public square agitating is clearly a response to what are taken to be >hostile governmental -- let's face it, mostly judicial -- rulings. ATT915010.txt> -- Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox: 202-806-8017 Howard University School of Law fax: 202-806-8567 2900 Van Ness Street NW mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Washington, DC 20008
RE: Religious Neutrality and Voluntarism
Marci writes: The right default position is the rule of law, but it is good for everyone when accommodation can be provided and the public good is not undermined. First, I would have thought that this is the very goal of RFRA and RLUIPA, the statutes that Marci so vigorously opposes: to provide accommodation subject to the caveat that the accommodation must not undermine a strong public interest. I have never understood the assertion that is impossible for judges (applying such a statute) to determine whether, on a particular set of facts, a religious claim would undermine any important purposes that a law serves. Second, we should remember that, at least as far as the Framers and de Tocquville were concerned, free religious exercise itself would tend to promote the public good (by developing virtue in citizens, establshing a limit on the reach of government, and so forth). In the historical view underlying the First Amendment, it would not simply be a matter of weighing a libertarian right to practice as against the public interest. There is an element of the public interest on the side of free religious practice, and that is part of the reason why religious freedom should only be defeated based on a strong showing of public interest (not just a mere invocation of the public good). Tom Berg _ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sat 3/5/2005 4:08 PM To: religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu Subject: Re: Religious Neutrality and Voluntarism Tom-- I actually think the argument about increasing regulation taking the air out of religious belief is something of a red herring in this arena. A great deal of regulation is what makes people free, e.g., laws that prohibit child abuse, or spousal abuse, or discrimination on any number of categories. To think that the lack of regulation at the time of the framing or soon thereafter can be correlated in any neat fashion with more liberty does not wash. Moreover,numerous laws exist that do in fact increase religious liberty, many of them accommodations, including income tax exemption, private tax deductions, and exemptions for faith-healing parents. Actually, I am not opposed to accommodation at all, but rather legislatures that do not consider the public good when they enact exemptions. The right default position is the rule of law, but it is good for everyone when accommodation can be provided and the public good is not undermined (this is in fact the thesis of my forthcoming book, God vs the Gavel) As to this new formulation of the debate that the public funding of schools and social services means that religious entities puts religious entities at a relative disadvantage, I am still formulating my views. It is a variation of the equality-should-displace-disestablishment- principles (e.g., Rosenberger, opponents to Locke v. Davey). Preliminarily, I think this is one of those arenas where the notion of equality and claims of discrimination hide more than they illuminate. Marci what constitutes religious neutrality and voluntarism becomes more complicated in an atmosphere of active, pervasive government. First, while religious life has been vital even without government promotion of religion in public schools etc., I suspect that this vitality has a lot to do with the fact that government has also historically shown regard for the freedom of private religious activity, either by not legislating in an area at all or by exempting religious organizations and individual religious conscience from restrictive laws. (This is what I meant when I said that the better course for religious vitality is not government sponsorship, but rather government steps to preserve a vigorous private sector in religion.) But Marci, of course, very often fights against such exemptions -- on the ground that religion should be subject to whatever laws everyone else is, even in the modern world in which there are many more restrictive laws than there used to be. Second, active government also complicates the issue of government financial aid going to religious schools, social services, and so forth. It's true that such aid poses the risk of making religious organizations dependent on government rather than on their own vigor (historically this risk is one of the prime reasons for opposing government aid to religious organizations). But active government also subsidizes the competitors to religious schools and social services -- public services and secular private services -- and this subsidization of competitors likewise threatens the ability of religious organizations and communities to succeed based on the power or attractiveness of their beliefs. You're not competing on your own merits if your competitors can charge less, or save costs, because they get government subsidies. Given this fact, I think that religious organizations and individuals generally should be allowed to decide whether they want to participate in government funding
