arcoftheuniverse

Religious freedom is a fragile human right. I hold that it is a natural right, grounded in human dignity, and universally merited, but relatively rarely in history have conditions existed in which religious freedom has been enjoyed in practice and guaranteed effectively by law. Even under constitutions such as that of the United States, a pioneer and model of religious freedom, new threats have emerged in recent years. A fortiori threats are faced by the Uighur Muslims in China, Christians in Nigeria, and Bahais in most places where they live.

Religious freedom faces a different kind of threat in skepticism of its worthiness as a right — different and in some respects more thoroughgoing. The defense of religious freedom in so many places depends on the presence of the human right of religious freedom in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights, other international law instruments, the constitutions of states, and other forums whose championing of this right depends on its presence in law: eighteen states whose foreign policies promote religious freedom, five multilateral bodies, including the European Union, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. If people cease to believe that religious freedom merits its place as a human right in international law and constitutions, this presence of religious freedom there will be endangered.

Numerous intellectuals, at least in the Anglo-American world, have published skeptical arguments that religious freedom deserves a right of its own. This is worrying, for it is in the university, including its law schools, that tomorrow’s advocates of human rights are trained as international lawyers, activists, government officials and much more.

In this paper, forthcoming as an article this month in the American Journal of Jurisprudence, I offer a fresh defense of the human right of religious freedom. Here is the abstract: 

This essay presents a fresh defense of the human right of religious freedom. It addresses two versions of skepticism of this human right, one a liberal variant, which questions religious freedom’s distinctiveness, the other a post-modern variant, which questions religious freedom’s universality. The case for a universal and distinct human right of religious freedom rests upon the claim that religion is a basic human good, manifesting human dignity and warranting a human right. The essay details four respects in which religion fulfills the meaning of a basic human good. Religion is a purposive set of acts, or practices; is a definable phenomenon whose core meaning is right relationship with a superhuman power; entails both an intrinsic good and derivate goods; and is universal in its scope. Finally, crucial to the human right of religious freedom is religion’s interiority, that is, its critical involvement of will, mind, and heart.

Response is welcome.

The war in Israel and Gaza puts the question of justice before all of us who read and pray about it.

The National Catholic Register ran a piece Friday with three writers voicing views on the justice of the conflict, of which I am one.

I also commend this particularly Catholic perspective of the justice of the conflict by Fr. Roger Landry.

Added November 13, 2023: See the excellent analysis of the justice of the conflict by Peter Sonski, the candidate for President of the United States of the American Solidarity Party.

Wounds remain. That is the premise of a new white paper published by the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, Fully Equipped For Every Good Work: A Proposal of Twelve Core Competencies in Ministering to Survivors of Sexual Abuse For Seminary Formation Programs.

The paper offers sound wisdom and proposals for seminaries to train priests to minister to people affected by clergy sex abuse. Implemented, it could go a long way towards the healing of victim-survivors, other people involved in sex abuse, and the Catholic Church — an approach that goes beyond protection, as important as this is, and legal settlement, which is often alone unrestorative. It is authored by Fr. Thomas Berg, Dr. Timothy Lock, and Dr. Justin Anderson, and grows out of their involvement in consultations held on clergy sex abuse at the University of Notre Dame in 2021 and the University of St. Thomas in 2022. The consultations also inspired the National Catholic Restorative Justice Initiative, which works for healing from these wounds in the Church.

Is there a case for reparations for racism in the United States?

Public Discourse has published a shorter version of the argument I made for reparations (and apology and forgiveness) as responses to racism in the paper that I posted on this blog in April. Public Discourse asked Dr. Derryck Green to respond to my piece, which he did thoughtfully. I had read Dr. Green’s chapter in the volume, Race and Covenant: Recovering the Religious Roots for American Reconciliation, edited by Gerald R. McDermott, where he argued for forgiveness even while he took a view of reparations different (though not entirely) from my own. His and the other essays in the volume were a strong inspiration of the paper I refer to above.

Both of our perspectives are written from a Christian standpoint, drawing upon both natural law as well as the Cross and Resurrection, which we see embedded in America’s national heritage and standing as resources for healing the wounds of racism.

The debate about war between Ukraine and Russia invokes different conceptions of peace. A minimal peace is what advocates of an immediate end to fighting propose. Genuine peace, though, realizes justice, which means not only Putin’s exit from Ukraine but also measures to heal the wounds of war. Such a justice is a Christian one of right relationship. This is what I argue in a new piece in America.

Since the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, reparations for racism have become proposed and debated more frequently and heatedly, and sometimes delivered, in the United States. A 2021 poll showed that only 28% of whites favor material reparations while 86% of blacks favor them.

The attached paper is an argument for reparations for racism in the United States that I composed. Its rationale is different, though, from those that most advocates for reparations today invoke. It is a Christian rationale. Historically, such a rationale used to be in the mainstream of the U.S. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King all invoked Christianity as they did the natural rights in the American founding. President Barack Obama invoked these themes as well. This tradition, now smothered, I tap for reparations.

Here is the abstract:

National healing for the persistent wounds of racism, America’s original sin, can be advanced through a national apology, reparations and forgiveness. The frequent practice of apologies and reparations around the world in the past generation provide precedent for such measures. Christianity’s teaching of reconciliation and accompanying notions of sin, repentance, forgiveness, and atonement provide a strong moral basis for these measures and resonate with the rationales through which the United States’s greatest champions of civil rights and equality have fought against racism and slavery. Because racism and slavery were supported with the sanction of the state, in the name of the collective body, measures of repair may now be performed by the state, in the name of the collective body. Questions of who pays, who receives, and what form reparations take are important ones and can be answered adequately. Through collective apology, reparations, and forgiveness, the United States would enact and renew its national covenant, acting in the tradition of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King, Jr.