This book is about the impossibility of religious freedom. Many laws, constitutions , and international treaties today grant legally enforceable rights to those whose.
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- The Impossibility of Religious Freedom by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan: A Review
Is it possible to do this without setting up a legal hierarchy of religious orthodoxy? And who is legally and constitutionally qualified to make such judgments? The problem here is that the definition of religion can be expanded even beyond folk religion. Are they also entitled to place impromptu memorabilia on the graves of their departed loved-ones? Such displays may be prompted by feelings almost identical to those of believers, so is difference to be found only in their beliefs about the afterlife?
What of Unitarians, most of whom hold very divergent personal beliefs that often do not include an afterlife or even a supreme deity? As one historian Brian C. But why should this be so? Presumably, most of the population of Boca Raton is religious, so what is the point of a cemetery regulation banning vertical displays when, clearly, almost anyone buying a cemetery plot can get a religious exemption?
Are they to understand that only vertical displays of a religious nature are to be tolerated? If so, can there be any clearer case of religious discrimination—in this case, discrimination against a non-religious minority by a religious majority? If any state makes this determination, it has curtailed freedom of religion.
What would be lost if law focused not on the special case of religion but on the accommodation of difference generally, and what compromises any such accommodations imply for commitments to equality? Without an explicit protection for religion, guarantees of freedom of speech, of the press, and of association would continue to protect most of those institutions, including religious ones, usually thought necessary for a free democratic society. With respect to some religious practice, though, religious persons and communities would, like other groups, have to make arguments for the special legal accommodation of difference to legislative bodies… Government favoritism or endorsement could be prevented by vigorous insistence on principles of equality, as is happening now in the case of gay marriage.
Groups making a case for differential treatment would be required to make a very strong showing, as in race cases, of past discrimination or present need, to justify special legal treatment. Such a right may not be best realized through laws guaranteeing religious freedom but by laws guaranteeing equality.
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Notify me of new posts via email. Create a free website or blog at WordPress. The First Amendment of the U. Constitution states that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Sullivan has this to say about folk religion from pp. Sullivan asks, What would be lost if law focused not on the special case of religion but on the accommodation of difference generally, and what compromises any such accommodations imply for commitments to equality?
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Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Jun 08, Corey rated it really liked it. Author Winnifred Sullivan is a lawyer turned religion scholar who argues for a very interesting thesis in this book.
The Impossibility of Religious Freedom | TheBentAngle
Her argument is, as you can guess from the title, that full religious freedom is actually impossible, that it is an American myth. She essentially argues Author Winnifred Sullivan is a lawyer turned religion scholar who argues for a very interesting thesis in this book. She essentially argues that because all free exercise lawsuits basically ask the courts to define what expressions of religion deserve legal protection, religion is still defined by the government and is therefore not fully free, nor can it be.
If you think about it, it makes sense. Take the cases of child neglect charges against Christian Science parents who refused medical treatment for their children. This is an exercise of their religious freedom, but can we allow this? Since our society must put restraints on certain expressions of religion, is there such a thing as religion freedom? To make her point, Sullivan gives examples from the Warner case that took place in Florida.
She argues that the judge in the case relied more on his personal theology than the testimony of the witnesses and experts during the trial. She also talks about the Religious Freedom Reform Act and its different manifestations in the states and argues that it basically gave special status in this country to religious people, which itself amounts to something unconstitutional. My main critique of the book is that it spends too much time on one case. I understand why the author did it But this book could be much better if it contained a pool of different cases that illustrate the author's points.
May 28, D. Dutcher rated it liked it Shelves: Learned and subtle argument about the impossibility of religious freedom, but too much time is spent on the court case the author uses as an example or argument. Sullivan argues that religious freedom is impossible because it's impossible for the state to determine orthodoxy or non-orthodoxy. The measure they use the author calls "protestant" as in it's individualistic, relies on a practice being enshrined in a sacred text, and is voluntary.
This is opposed to catholic as in oral, coercive, and c Learned and subtle argument about the impossibility of religious freedom, but too much time is spent on the court case the author uses as an example or argument. This is opposed to catholic as in oral, coercive, and collective. These are temperaments not bound to the religions named-a "dominionist" Protestant who believes in the establishment of Christianity as a national religion is catholic in his aims. However protestant methods are impossible because most of modern american religion is what is called "lived" religion, and not directly tied or even provable to even a loose protestant standard.
The case they discusses is about a coalition of various religious plantiffs protesting the removal of the religious symbols they used to decorate the cemetery they interred their dead in because they didn't meet the cemetery's standards. It's hard to make a synopsis of how the case challenges current standards of religious accommodation, and you have to read the book to see. The end result though, is that it's more or less impossible to treat religious freedom as such, and that only a focus on equality of persons can help.
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I don't think they go into much detail on what that means in real terms, however. The focus is on protecting difference in general than determining whether or not a particular difference is religious, and religious people would have to lobby similar to other interest groups without any special religious protection. The transformation would be to enable people to have free lives out of the state, a radical freedom as it's called.
I'm not sure how that would work, as the point to religious freedom is to protect unpopular religions against more powerful belief systems. Indonesia is briefly used as an example, but I don't think anyone would argue it's really that much better than the current system, if not worse.
The argument is very subtle though, and again I'm probably losing a lot in describing it.
The Impossibility of Religious Freedom by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan: A Review
This is a book you definitely want to reread many times to get the full flavor of it. However, it's a relatively brief book that is mostly focused on the court case. I think more information on what a post-religious freedom society would be like would have been helpful. The problem is that if the case she cites were post-rf, they would have had no recourse at all to the courts-the rules against decorations are clear, and there is no argument that the city would have to provide for all displays on city land that would hold water.
Oct 26, Thomas Mackell rated it it was amazing. Oftentimes when it comes to legal cases of religious freedom, the state is choosing the losers and the winners, either directly or indirectly. This is because the law essentializes religion to be only one thing when it is often multiple. The modern legal system, in its empirical, positivist modes of thought, misunderstands religion. Religion is often transient and nonbinary, developed from modes of thought separate from the trajectory of the modern Enlightenment western modes of thought which fo Oftentimes when it comes to legal cases of religious freedom, the state is choosing the losers and the winners, either directly or indirectly.
Religion is often transient and nonbinary, developed from modes of thought separate from the trajectory of the modern Enlightenment western modes of thought which formed our legal system as we know it today.
Importantly, this legal system, as an inherent characteristic of its structure, cannot change itself as fast as religion does. The law must be trans-historical and stable to be applied in various cases while most contemporary theories of religion are by nature specific to a historical context.
Sullivan begins the final chapter of The Impossibility of Religious Freedom with a discussion of two seemingly opposed views which are held by the plaintiffs in the Warner trial. The court presumed that religion consists of stable doctrine and law which must be highly textual and able to be referenced. This places religious peoples as passive agents in their traditions.
It is not necessarily the symbols involved in these formative processes that religious people engage in that matter, but what people do with them. Therefore, by the mere act of bringing their case into the courtroom, the plaintiffs were forced to publicly formulate their religion in real time. They were basically being asked to outline all of the various motivations and influences leading to their actions which they deemed to be religious by an interrogator who only understood legitimate religious influences to be those which are as strictly binding as legal doctrine.
As if the law could take cognizance only of what could be construed as a competing set of norms, norms finding their authority in an alternative but recognizable religio-legal structure. This question is one that courts would like to avoid. The City understood religion to be like secular law in that it simply involved passive religious subjects fitting their actions to a prescribed set of rules, regulations, and obligations Sullivan, It is as if the legal system would like all religions to follow the same structure as legal code and contain a canonized set of laws and orders to be followed.
The court is afraid of religion being an intensely personal or private activity as this is hard to regulate. However, religion is not personal, there is a strong connection to a community, dead and alive, social and emotional. The Warner plaintiffs, like all persons who are religiously motivated, were profoundly connected to a wider community, dead and alive. Where is this community? What do they say? These are not easy questions to answer, even for ordained religious authorities. Institutional powers exhibit anxiety about the anarchy which an individualistic understanding of religion ostensibly allows for.
Whatever is meaningful to people is a possibility for thinking about religion. Sullivan sees these lived religious practices as coming out of communal relations. Unfortunately, seeing as the courts are unwilling to let their idea of religious freedom go, Sullivan is unhelpful to the plaintiffs as well, and they ultimately lose the trial. Sullivan sees religion clauses in the law as a real problem.
She says people are abused by the system.