Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Announcing the Mattone Center for Law and Religion

We have exciting news to share! In recognition of a transformative gift to endow the Center’s activities, the St. John’s Center for Law and Religion has been renamed in honor of alumni Denise Melillo Mattone and Michael X. Mattone. The multimillion-dollar gift will allow the Center to offer new educational programs and expand its impact as a hub for exploring issues of law and religion in the United States and around the world. 

The newly named Denise ‘90 and Michael ‘91 Mattone Center for Law and Religion will offer educational opportunities, including innovative coursework, a visiting scholars program, and academic workshops and conferences at St. John’s campuses in New York, Paris, and Rome. It will also host programs for St. John’s alumni and the wider public, including podcasts, videos, and live events on pressing church-state issues. 

You can read more about the Mattones in the official announcement, here.

We are tremendously grateful to Denise and Michael for their confidence in us and are honored that the Center now bears their names. Stay tuned for further announcement about upcoming events in the new year!

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Denmark Vesey’s Bible

In my law-and-religion seminar, we spend about a week on religion in public culture, focusing specifically on the United States. Historically, and even today, religious appeals have played a major role in American public conflicts, on all sides. A new book from Princeton University Press, Denmark Vesey’s Bible: The Thwarted Revolt That Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial, discusses the role of biblical allusions in one important episode, a slave rebellion that shook the antebellum South. The author is Jeremy Schipper, a professor in the Departments for the Study of Religion and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. Here is the publisher’s description:

On July 2, 1822, Denmark Vesey, a formerly enslaved man, was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina. He was convicted of plotting what might have been the largest insurrection against slaveholders in US history. Witnesses claimed that Vesey appealed to numerous biblical texts to promote and justify the revolt. While sentencing Vesey to death, Lionel Henry Kennedy, a magistrate at the trial, accused Vesey not only of treason but also of “attempting to pervert the sacred words of God into a sanction for crimes of the blackest hue.” Denmark Vesey’s Bible tells the story of this momentous trial, examining the role of scriptural interpretation in the deadly struggle against American white supremacy and its brutal enforcement.

Jeremy Schipper brings the trial and its aftermath vividly to life, drawing on court documents, personal letters, sermons, speeches, and editorials. He shows how Vesey compared people of African descent with enslaved Israelites in the Bible, while his accusers portrayed plantation owners as benevolent biblical patriarchs responsible for providing religious instruction to the enslaved. What emerges is an explosive portrait of an antebellum city in the grips of racial terror, violence, and contending visions of biblical truth.

Shedding light on the uses of scripture in America’s troubled racial history, Denmark Vesey’s Bible draws vital lessons from a terrible moment in the nation’s past, enabling us to confront racism and religious discord today with renewed urgency and understanding.

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Legal Spirits 059: Daniel McCarthy on “the Other Nones”

Daniel McCarthy

In this episode, Center Director Mark Movsesian interviews journalist Daniel McCarthy on his recent essay in Modern Age, “The Other Nones.” Dan argues that the decline of traditional Christianity in the West hasn’t led to the age of rationalism and progress that many secularists predicted, but instead to an age of entropy, in which people have lost faith in unifying narratives of all kinds, political and ideological as well as religious. Can we restore some idea of the common good? Listen in!

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Around the Web

Here some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • In Farrakhan v. Anti-Defamation League, a New York federal district court dismissed a complaint alleging that the Anti-Defamation League violated Farrakhan’s First Amendment Rights by repeatedly referring to him and his organization as antisemitic. In the dismissal, the Court reasoned that Farrakhan failed to allege that his injuries were concrete or traceable to the ADL.
  • The City of New York has agreed to settle a class action damage claim brought by Muslim women protesting a policy that required wearers of hijabs to remove them when sitting for arrest photos. The NYPD agreed to change the policy in an earlier settlement in 2020, and the settlement amounts to $17.5 million.
  • In Citizens United to Protect Our Neighborhoods v. Village of Chestnut Ridge, New York, the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a complaint challenging a new zoning law that allowed places of worship to be more easily built, claiming that the law improperly promoted religion. The Court reasoned that the plaintiffs lacked standing, suffering no cognizable harm apart from tax dollars passing the law.
  • In United States v. Safehouse, a Pennsylvania district court held that the prosecution of a nonprofit providing safe injection sites for drug users did not violate the Free Exercise Clause. Despite the leaders of the nonprofit claiming religious motivation, the entity itself has no religious affiliation, and the Court therefore held that the religious inspiration of its leaders doesn’t protect it against prosecution for the violation of a federal statute criminalizing the maintenance of drug-involved premises.
  • In Ocean Grove, New Jersey, the NJ State Department for Environmental Protection ordered the Christian nonprofit owners of the waterfront area to allow beach access to the public on Sunday mornings or face up to $25,000 in fines per day. State officials claim that the closure violates the Coastal Area Facilities Review Act, which itself is based on the public-trust doctrine, outlining that certain natural goods like waterfront areas are to be reserved for public use.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

The Culture Wars, 30 Years Later

Thirty years ago, scholar James Davison Hunter coined the phrase, “the culture wars,” to describe American social dynamics at the end of the Cold War. The wars have only intensified–so much so, in fact, that people now use a new term, “polarization,” to describe what is going on. More and more, it seems the Enlightenment settlement between rationalism and Christianity that characterized American culture has unraveled. (Stay tuned for my new Legal Spirits interview with Dan McCarthy, in which we discuss this topic). What will come next? Can America hold together?

Hunter, the LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory and executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, has a new book on the subject, Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis. The publisher is Yale University Press. Anything by Hunter on this subject is self-recommending. Here’s Yale’s description:

The long-developing cultural divisions beneath our present political crisis
 
Liberal democracy in America has always contained contradictions—most notably, a noble but abstract commitment to freedom, justice, and equality that, tragically, has seldom been realized in practice. While these contradictions have caused dissent and even violence, there was always an underlying and evolving solidarity drawn from the cultural resources of America’s “hybrid Enlightenment.”
 
James Davison Hunter, who introduced the concept of “culture wars” thirty years ago, tells us in this new book that those historic sources of national solidarity have now largely dissolved. While a deepening political polarization is the most obvious sign of this, the true problem is not polarization per se but the absence of cultural resources to work through what divides us. The destructive logic that has filled the void only makes bridging our differences more challenging. In the end, all political regimes require some level of unity. If it cannot be generated organically, it will be imposed by force.
 
Can America’s political crisis be fixed? Can an Enlightenment-era institution—liberal democracy—survive and thrive in a post-Enlightenment world? If, for some, salvaging the older sources of national solidarity is neither possible sociologically, nor desirable politically or ethically, what cultural resources will support liberal democracy in the future?

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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • In Garrick v. Moody Bible Institute, the Seventh Circuit permitted a sex discrimination lawsuit against the Moody Bible Institute to proceed, rejecting the institution’s argument for dismissal based on the religious autonomy doctrine. The court reasoned that while religious autonomy is important, it does not provide immunity in cases of non-ministerial employee discrimination.
  • In The Satanic Temple v. The City of Chicago, an Illinois district court allowed the Satanic Temple’s claim that the city violated the Establishment Clause by consistently delaying a request for a Satanic clergyman to deliver an invocation at a City Council meeting to proceed, stating that the city must treat the Satanic clergy member equally with those of other religions.
  • Iowa enacted a state Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which protects individuals’ religious exercise from government interference unless the government proves a compelling interest and uses the least restrictive means.
  • In Omid v. Ahmadi, a Connecticut trial court declined to enforce an Islamic mahr agreement in a divorce case. The court found the agreement’s terms ambiguous and intertwined with Islamic law and therefore deemed the agreement unenforceable due to difficulty in separating secular from religious considerations.
  • In Ramirez v. World Mission Society, Church of God, a plaintiff sued a church and its pastor for fraud, emotional distress, and negligence. The plaintiff alleges she was pressured into joining the church through concealment of its leader’s identity and coerced into donating money based on a misrepresented charitable use of funds.
  • Six inmates at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in New York filed a lawsuit against a statewide prison lockdown preventing them from viewing the solar eclipse. The inmates are arguing they hold sincerely-held religious belief that this eclipse is important to the practice of their religion.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A New Collection on Law in the Hebrew Bible

When law professors think of law and religion, we’re apt to think of contemporary church-and-state issues: the free exercise and establishment clauses, statutes like RFRA and RLUIPA and other civil rights laws. But issues of law come up within religions as well. Not too many scholars focus on the latter question, at least in contemporary law schools, which is a pity. A new collection of essays out later this month from Cambridge, The Cambridge Companion to Law in the Hebrew Bible, is therefore a very welcome addition. The editor is Bruce Wells at the University of Texas-Austin. Here’s the publisher’s description:

This Companion offers a comprehensive overview of the history, nature, and legacy of biblical law.  Examining the debates that swirl around the nature of biblical law, it explores its historical context, the significance of its rules, and its influence on early Judaism and Christianity. The volume also interrogates key questions: Were the rules intended to function as ancient Israel’s statutory law? Is there evidence to indicate that they served a different purpose? What is the relationship between this legal material and other parts of the Hebrew Bible? Most importantly, the book provides an in-depth look at the content of the Torah’s laws, with individual essays on substantive, procedural, and ritual law. With contributions from an international team of experts, written specially for this volume, The Cambridge Companion to Law in the Hebrew Bible provides an up-to-date look at scholarship on biblical law and outlines themes and topics for future research.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

Barclay and DeGirolami at St. John’s Next Week

I’m delighted to announce that next week the Center will welcome Stephanie Barclay (Notre Dame), and welcome back Marc DeGirolami (Catholic University), for a discussion of the recent school prayer case, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022). Details about the event, which the Center will co-host with the St. John’s Journal of Catholic Legal Studies, are here (registration is required). Friends of the Center, drop by and say hello!

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Legal Spirits 058: Law & Justice in Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”

“Measure for Measure” in the First Folio (1623)

First performed 400 years ago, William Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” addresses an enduring human dilemma. No society can safely exist without law, but law itself depends on human judgment, which is prone to error and corruption. In this episode, Center Director Mark Movsesian and Northwestern Law Professor John McGinnis discuss this great but problematic play and explore why it remains so humbling for lawyers and judges today. Listen in!

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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court held in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis that the First Amendment prohibits Colorado from requiring a wedding website designer to design websites for same-sex weddings in violation of her religious beliefs. On remand, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the District of Colorado entered a final order in the case in favor of the designer.
  • The Department of Justice filed suit in federal court seeking to enjoin the California Department of Corrections from requiring Muslim and Sikh officers to be clean shaven so that they can properly wear tight-fitting respirators. The complaint argues that wearing a beard is a sincerely held religious belief and that the Department of Corrections has not made an effort to accommodate the officers by, for example, placing them in positions that do not require use of respirators or offering alternative respirators that fit over beards. 
  • In St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church v. City of Brookings, a federal district court held that a zoning ordinance limiting the number of days a church can serve free meals to needy people violates RLUIPA. The church has been serving meals three to four times per week, but, in 2021, the city amended its zoning code to require a permit to continue serving meals and limited the service to two times per week.
  • In Shlomo Hyman v. Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey, the New Jersey Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a suit brought by a rabbi who was terminated by an Orthodox Jewish day school for allegedly engaging in inappropriate conduct with elementary school-aged female students. The rabbi alleged the investigation that led to his termination was a “sham” and that he had been defamed, while the day school argued that he could not sue the school because its decision to terminate him is covered under the ministerial exception.
  • In T.I. v. R.I., a New York state trial court held that it would recognize a couple’s religious marriage even though the marriage was later annulled by a religious tribunal. The husband claimed that after the annulment, the marriage no longer existed and sought to have the wife’s civil divorce action dismissed, but the court refused to do so.
  • In S.E. v. Edelstein, an Ohio state appellate court affirmed dismissal of a suit brought by an Orthodox Jewish wife alleging her father-in-law intentionally interfered with a Jewish-law marriage contract she had with her husband. The court found that the suit, although couched as an intentional interference with contract claim, essentially sought damages for alienation of affections and breach of promise to marry, and those claims were barred by Ohio law. 
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Making American Religion Moderate

At the Law & Liberty site this morning, I review a new documentary on the history of religious freedom in America, “Free Exercise.” The film shows how minority religious communities–Catholics, Mormons, and others–have changed America over time. But, I argue, America has changed minority religions as well. Here’s an excerpt:

ike the Quakers, who went from being bottle-breaking radicals to sober citizens, Catholics and Mormons themselves changed in ways that made them less threatening to the American majority. One major point of contention between the Catholic Church and the wider American society had to do with religious liberty itself. The nineteenth-century Church was the Church of the Syllabus of Errors (1864), a papal document that condemned freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state as dangerous heresies. America’s Protestant majority saw this document and the values it espoused as hostile to fundamental American commitments. In the 1928 campaign, The Atlantic published an open letter questioning whether a Catholic like Smith could serve as president, citing the Syllabus and other papal pronouncements on church and state.

A hundred years later, though, and largely through the efforts of American Catholics like Fr. John Courtney Murray, the Second Vatican Council adopted Dignitatis Humanae, a document that specifically endorses religious liberty as a civil right. Catholic scholars have argued that Dignitatis Humanae and the Syllabus of Errors can be interpreted consistently with one another and that, from a theological perspective, there was no change. However theologians understand the situation, though, after Dignitatis Humanae, something had indeed changed as a practical matter. A major point of tension between the Catholic Church and American culture had disappeared, largely because of American influence.

Or consider the LDS Church. A primary source of conflict between Mormons and the wider American society in the nineteenth century had to do with plural marriage, the issue in cases like Reynolds and Davis. In 1890, however, the LDS Church officially ended the practice—making it possible for Utah to be admitted as a state six years later. Practically speaking, Mormonism changed in a way that made it much less threatening to the wider American public. Mormons conformed to social convention, and relations between the LDS Church and other Americans have been better ever since.

What causes religions in America to move toward the mean over time? Some argue that the Lockean ideology that underlies our First Amendment is designed to encourage religious moderation—to minimize religious “enthusiasms” that threaten social peace. If that’s the case, Lockeanism certainly seems to be working. Or perhaps another factor explains things. Two hundred years ago, Tocqueville wrote about the strong pressures for social conformity that exist in the United States, where he observed “little independence of mind.” Whether as a result of ideology or social norms, or both, the pattern is apparent.

You can read the full essay here.