The World-Defining Contest between Monism and Dualism and the Future of Religious Freedom

Brett G. Scharffs is Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies and Rex E. Lee Chair and Professor of Law at  Brigham Young University Law School. This post is excerpted from a chapter in the forthcoming book in the Routledge ICLARS Series on Law and Religion:  Law, Religion, and Freedom: Conceptualizing a Common Right, W. Cole Durham, Jr, Javier Martínez-Torrón, and Donlu Thayer, eds. (Routledge 2020).

This post is part of an ongoing Series about Religion and the Rule of Law.

Setting aside the immediate exigencies of the coronavirus crisis, we are living at an important time for religious freedom, and that is not necessarily a good thing. It seems quite apparent that in recent years many nations are in the midst of a world-defining struggle between two dramatically different visions of the state and its relationship with its people. The contest is between what is sometimes called monism, which is inclined towards various types of statism that emphasize the state’s monopoly on legal power, and dualism, the idea that the state’s domain over the peoples’ lives is in some important way subject to limits that lie outside and beyond the state itself.

Dualism is an old idea. The Gospel of Mark famously reflects a worldview at least 2000 years old in Jesus’s answer to a lawyer who asked whether it was lawful to pay taxes to the ruling state:  “ Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Mark 12:15-17 (KJV). (more…)

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Freedom of Religion and Belief for Everyone Everywhere: Lessons Learned and Good Practices

Brett G. Scharffs is Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies and Rex E. Lee Chair and Professor of Law at  Brigham Young University Law School. This post is adapted from a presentation made 20 February 2020 in Washington, DC, at the Special Meeting to Share Lessons Learned and Exchange Good Practices to Advance a Regional Dialogue on the Right to Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Religion or Belief Committee on Juridical and Political Affairs, Permanent Council of the Organization of American States.

The need for “climate change” in human rights discourse

Ján Figeľ, the European Union’s Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion and Belief, speaks often of the need for “climate change” in our human rights discourse. Why is this? Today, our contemporary human rights discourse is more divisive and politicized than it ought to be. In addition, sometimes human rights seem too imperial, as if they are going to solve every problem. At other times, they seem quite fragile and vulnerable, subject to a variety of types of criticism and condemnation. And so, I think it is true that we really do need “climate change” in our human rights discourse. (more…)

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The Chained Wife Problem: Religious and Secular Perspectives

Dmytro Vovk is Director of the Centre for the Rule of Law and Religion Studies, Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and co-editor of Talk About: Law and Religion.

In January 2020, it was reported that a Jewish woman in London launched a private prosecution against her ex-husband who had refused to grant her a religious divorce, called a get. Though they were divorced under civil laws, the absence of a religious divorce chained the wife in her marriage and negatively affected her life in the community, primarily by preventing her from remarrying. The woman and her lawyers claimed that the husband’s behavior should be prosecuted under a 2015 law criminalizing “controlling and coercive behavior” as a form of domestic abuse. The threat of criminal conviction convinced the ex-husband to grant the woman the get, and she later revoked her action as a result. (more…)

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