The tumult of the twentieth century had a great impact on the role of religion in Chinese society. Antipathy toward religion reached its height in China during the Cultural Revolution, one of the few times in history when religion was almost completely wiped out in a single country. Religion in China has experienced a resurgence since the beginning of the Reform and Opening Up period in 1978. With the renewal of religious practice, new proposals have been put forward for the role of religious ideas in public life. In addition to the endurance of Marxist and liberal conceptions of the place of religion in society, new voices have emerged, arguing for return to Confucianism as the source of moral vitality in public life, or advancing Christian public theology as a moral resource for individuals adrift and alienated by the rapid changes of a modernizing economy. These realities have reshaped debates about the protection of religious freedom in China. This article introduces these new social and discursive realities and sets the stage for the articles that follow.

Religious accommodation analysis often takes the form of a tripartite test. One of the factors in such a test is the presence of burden, the current judicial understandings of which have been inadequate to capture a wide range of impact that government regulations have on the individual or community practice of religion. This article considers and compares the jurisprudence of the high courts of the United States and Canada and the European Court of Human Rights and argues for an expansive understanding of the burden requirement in the evaluation of religious accommodation claims, namely to consider burden as (1) coercion, (2) impact, and (3) ratification. I argue that it is imperative to acknowledge different kinds of burden before proceeding to determine its gravity. This approach takes religion more seriously than prevailing approaches and provides for a more equitable distribution of the burden of proof in religious accommodation claims.

On December 29, 1170, in the late afternoon (and thus after the main meal of the day but shortly before vespers), four knights entered Canterbury Cathedral. Impelled, as far as history knows, by the angry words of King Henry II, “will no one rid me of this turbulent priest,” they had come to confront Archbishop Thomas Becket and win King Henry's favor by forcing the long-simmering dispute between Becket and his king to some final resolution. When the Archbishop refused their conflicting demands and reacted with scorn to their insults, the knights withdrew, only to arm themselves and follow Becket into the cathedral. As the traditional account has it:

[t]he bell for vespers began to sound, and the archbishop, with his cross borne in front of him, made his way in as usual into the cathedral. Hardly had he reached the ascent to the choir than the noise of armed men and the shout of the knights announced that the pursuers were at hand. “Where is the archbishop, where is the traitor?” resounded through the hollow aisles, mingling strangely with the recitation of the psalms in the choir. Becket, hearing this, turned back a few steps, and calmly awaited their approach in the corner of the northern transept before the little altar of S[t .] Benedict. “Here,” he cried, “is the archbishop—no traitor, but a priest of God.” Awed by his demeanor, and perhaps by the sanctity of the place, no one dared strike. A parley began. They sought to lash their failing courage into action by words. A hasty and insulting epithet gave Fitz Urse the opportunity he wanted. A blow aimed at the archbishop's head only knocked his skull-cap to the ground, but it was enough to loose the bandogs of hell. A stroke from Tracy cut off the tonsured back of [Becket's] skull, another from Brito brought him to his knees.

John Lewis's civil rights activism in the 1960s often obscures the fact that he won elective office as a racially moderate politician. Scholars have long noted the efficacy of using deracialized, or racially transcendent, campaign strategies to get elected, despite normative concerns. These strategies were critical to electing Black governors, senators, and even President Obama. However, in the age of Black Lives Matter, some have questioned the continued usefulness of the strategy. Using Rep. Lewis's life as a guide, I examine the ways that some Black politicians continue to use deracialization, even in this racially charged social and political moment, and I explain how younger cohorts of Black politicians challenge this approach. Ultimately, I argue that while deracialization is a contested strategy, its efficacy has not diminished. Rather, Black politicians have expanded the boundaries of what constitutes racially transcendent politics to include consensus issues like voting rights, which while highly racialized, are not likely to induce an erosion of support among non-Black Democratic voters.

This article looks at the ways in which the legal system of a modern European jurisdiction has engaged with a counter-cultural minority religious movement. The jurisdiction in question is England and Wales, and the religious movement is revived modern Paganism. The article seeks to cast light on the question of what a post-Christian secular state does in practice when its commitment to pluralistic values encounters a group whose self-understanding challenges the norms of both Christianity and secularity. In more general terms, it allows us to look at how the law of England and Wales has attempted to move beyond its historic confessional Protestant premises; and how this attempt has not been without its anomalies and shortcomings.

Tibet is distinct within the Buddhist regions of Asia for its claims to have developed religious laws. The rulers of its early empire civilized their people by creating laws on the basis of Buddhist principles—or so it is claimed by the writers of Tibetan historical narratives. In fact, the earliest Tibetan laws were not linked in any significant way with Buddhist principles, even after the religion had been firmly established in the region. In this article I explore why and how the idea of Buddhist law first emerged, examining its development through a number of texts from the empire (sixth to ninth centuries) and the immediate postimperial period (tenth to twelfth centuries). It turns out that more ideological accounts of Buddhist law were developed only as the structures of the empire were collapsing. Nevertheless, they do seem to have resonated with at least one, tenth-century ruler. These narratives set the scene for a long series of historical accounts in which the idea that Tibetan law was based on Buddhist principles took hold—an idea that was maintained well into the twentieth century.

Religion and politics create volatile issues in many parts of the world and have been intensely debated in America. Recent charges and counter-charges about “godless humanists” and “religious zealots” have been heated. With an election campaign underway, the subject of religion in public life remains a potential iceberg issue of 1988 — massive but submerged. On the eve of the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights, it is plain that controversies about religion in public life are as lively and potent today as when the First Amendment was being debated nearly 200 years ago.

But how do the American people view the place of religion in public life today? Is there a vital knowledge of the Constitution? Where do Americans currently draw the line between church and state? Are there significant limits to tolerance? Are there important differences between the general public and key leadership groups? Is there less religious tolerance today than 20 or 30 years ago?

To answer such questions and help assess the state of the union regarding religion and public life, the Williamsburg Charter Foundation commissioned a nationwide opinion survey. The purpose of the study was to learn how people view these issues 200 years into the American experiment. The motive was not to find out simply what the majority wants changed or restricted. After all, the Bill of Rights was written to guarantee the rights of minorities against the will of the majority.

The passage in the Williamsburg Charter referring to two questions — “how we view the place of religion in American life and how we should contend with each other's deepest differences in the public sphere” — opens two lines of inquiry. First, I understand the “we” in the passage to refer at least in part to the religious communities; from this follows the need to assess how these communities understand their exercise of religious and moral authority (power) in the public arena. Second, the passage is also open to an investigation of the exercise of power in our national life. Presumably the religious communities contend among themselves and with other institutions in the evaluation of how power is exercised in the name of the nation.

After delivering a Carlson Lecture at the University of Minnesota in 1994, Hannan Ashrawi was asked by an audience member if a newly formed, independent State of Palestine would adopt the Sharīa (Islamic law) as the law of the land. The question reveals a deep seated fear in the American mind about Islamic justice. Because Islamic concepts of law and justice have developed from a very different worldview, they seem incomprehensible to us. We don't understand why Muslims argue about theology when talking about legal cases that appear in the news.

The Islamic community is organized as a theocracy, where God is the ruler of the community. In such a community, there is very little doubt that God is the ultimate authority in all things, including questions of law. There might, however, be considerable doubt about how the human members of the community respond to, make use of, and/or interpret God's intentions. Islam is no exception to this rule. Throughout its history, groups of people have answered questions about God and the community in different ways.

When asked who she is, an individual may identify herself as Hispanic, a born-again Christian, Canadian, an accountant, a sister, a daughter, a friend. The various communities to which she belongs create a web of membership, strands of her individual identity. Her membership in a public legal community, her citizenship, stands out as a dominant strand, affecting her ability to maintain and enjoy other strands of membership and identity, be they religious, professional, familial or otherwise.

Stewart Macaulay's observation regarding public and private governments applies similarly to an individual's membership in her communities; rather than sharp distinctions there is “interpenetration, overlapping jurisdictions and opportunities for both harmony and conflict.… An individual's membership in various communities creates a web of reciprocal relationships, opportunities for harmony and conflict. The individual may influence the institutions of her various communities which in turn help define who she is. In some ways, this is a question of legal pluralism, the simultaneous operation of multiple legal systems.

It is often noted that the term “ts'daqah” is derived from the Hebrew word for “justice.” However, this observation is rarely accompanied by a historically valid definition of the sort of justice assumed to inform Jewish sources on the issue. The dichotomizing of “ts'daqah” and “charity,” commonly offered in place of such a definition, oversimplifies the complex connotations of both terms. The observation that “justice” is “obligatory” or “compulsory,” whereas “charity” is a voluntary act of love, also falls short. It is true that halakhah tends to be expressed in terms of obligations rather than rights, and that this tendency has played a major role in shaping rabbinic sources on support of the poor. As Moshe Silberg notes in the course of his analysis of the moral underpinnings of Jewish law, “[the halakbah] is not primarily concerned with the indebtedness to the claimant, but with the obligation to the debtor, with his religio-moral obligation … and it is only as though in a side effect, as a secondary result of the process, does the claimant receive his money.” Nevertheless, “obligatory giving” is by itself an incomplete characterization of the conceptual structure of ts'daqah.

Moreover, beyond these theoretical considerations, confusion concerning the meaning of ts'daqah also has practical implications. The term is frequently misapplied by Jews to describe any contribution to a not-for-profit organization (excluding taxes), regardless of how the contribution is actually used. Jewish communal fund-raisers regularly refer to contributions to sundry funds and projects as ts'daqah, whether the ultimate destination of a contribution is assistance to poor people, construction of a new swimming pool at a Jewish community center, or the salary of a fund administrator.

For two centuries the American dream has flourished on the revolutionary notion that a united people can actually live with and even thrive on its deepest differences.

We are a diverse lot. This is one of our great strengths as a nation. Even with time our individual distinctiveness does not wane. We relish, enrich and continue to celebrate our diversity — our multiple heritages, the cacophony and splendor of our earlier languages and customs, our myriad ethnic and racial differences. We are Everyman. Any citizen of this world can find here a common thread of identification linking himself or herself to our society.

To provide world leadership, to prosper, even to long exist as a coherent nation, we as a people must respect and preserve this notion of living with our deepest differences. It was at the heart of our forefathers' genius in conceiving and establishing this government of the people, by the people and for the people. Nowhere is this idea more critical or central to our national well-being than in the domain of religious liberty. It was for this reason that the Williamsburg Charter Foundation came into being as a core unit in the Bicentennial celebration of our U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

Ethical discussions of divorce have usually taken up the question of whether or when two spouses may divorce and remarry. They have focussed on the dissolution of the marital bond. Almost no attention has been given to the ethical issues involved in negotiating a divorce or maintaining the parental bond in divorce.

Emerging efforts to maintain parental bonds in divorce rest on many diverse considerations. Let us begin with the social changes demanding this concern and then move to some religious, ethical, and legal responses to this challenge.