Challenges to Religious Liberty in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This edited volume is the product of a conference convened by the Witherspoon Institute in 2009 to confront five major questions concerning religious liberty in our century. The participants, each of whom contributed one of the book's essays, are among the most prominent contemporary thinkers on religious liberty issues, representing the disciplines of law, sociology, political science and foreign policy, and philosophy. Each of the five questions becomes a chapter containing two essays. Chapter 1 concerns the methods and sources for originalist interpretations of the First Amendment religion clauses. Chapter 2 focuses on the proper scope of government in protecting individuals from coercion by religious groups. Chapter 3 explores contemporary challenges to the right of conscience, both for individuals and for religious institutions. Chapter 4 analyzes the impact of globalization on religious liberty, and Chapter 5 considers the United States's moral responsibilities to promote religious liberty abroad. Although all of the subjects and most of the individual contributions are excellent, the sequence of chapters seems a bit disjointed, combining rather specific issues of US constitutional analysis with reflections on moral philosophy and analysis of global developments. The collection as a whole would have benefitted from a trajectory that brought the essays' individual insights to bear on each other as a coherent whole.