This Article briefly introduces the work of Natan Lerner, a leading Israeli school of religion, human rights, group rights, and self-determination as well as racism, genocide, and religious violence. It sets the volume in the context of modern global religion and human rights controversies and the scholarship that has emerged in the past…[Read more]

The recent scandals over clerical pedophilia have raised anew ancient church battles over the propriety of clerical celibacy. Using a sensational sixteenth-century case as a laboratory, this Article analyzes the traditional Roman Catholic arguments in favor of clerical celibacy and the attacks on those arguments by the sixteenth-century Protestant…[Read more]

Parental consent to engagement and marriage was a major reform that the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation introduced to stamp out the late medieval Catholic toleration of clandestine marriages. John Calvin introduced the doctrine of parental consent to Protestant Geneva both in statutes that he drafted and in cases that he adjudicated as a…[Read more]

In John Calvin’s Geneva, as much as today, marriage was a contract between a fit man and a fit woman of the age of consent. Marriage was much more than a contract. It was also a spiritual, social, natural, and economic unit that could involve many other parties besides the couple. But marriage was never less than a contract. It could not be c…[Read more]

This article introduces a symposium commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 1981 U.N. Declaration on Elimination of All Forms of Religious Intolerance and of Discrimination Based Upon Religion and Belief. The symposium was aimed at comparing religious liberty in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United…[Read more]

This project celebrates and evaluates Don S. Browning’s groundbreaking contribution to critical family theory, the concept of the equal regard family. Browning’s ethic of equal regard demands husbands and wives to give equal respect for the dignity and wellbeing of the other, equal devotion to the procreation and nurture of their children, equal…[Read more]

This Article includes Brett T. Wilmot’s review of John Witte, Jr.’s work, God’s Joust, God’s Justice, along with the author’s response to this review.

This Article describes the modern paradox of religious rights — the sudden awakening of religion and religious freedom around the globe versus the tragic escalation of religious rights abuses born of local bigotry and creedal clashes. This paradox lies in part in competing understandings of the rights and rites of conversion and the role that…[Read more]

The seventeenth-century English Revolution was pulsing with new democratic ideas of civil rights, marital freedom, freedom of speech and press, religious liberty, separation of church-state, and disestablishment of religion. The English philosopher and poet, John Milton was among the most radical and articulate advocate of these ideas, which he…[Read more]

This Article is an appreciative review of a new masterwork on religious freedom by leading constitutional scholar, Kent Greenawalt. The book crisply summarizes the full range of founding principles of religious liberty in America – liberty of conscience, freedom of exercise, religious diversity and equality, separation of church and state, and d…[Read more]

This Article, translated into German, analyzes the development of rights talk in the pre-Enlightenment Protestant tradition, especially as formulated by the sixteenth-century Calvinist theologian and jurist, Theodore Beza. Responding to the horrific persecution born of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, Beza mobilized classical, Catholic,…[Read more]

This Article analyzes the development of rights talk in the pre-Enlightenment
Protestant tradition, especially as formulated by the sixteenth-century Calvinist
theologian and jurist, Theodore Beza. Responding to the horrific persecution born of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, Beza mobilized classical, Catholic, and Protestant sources…[Read more]

This chapter explains how the sixteenth-century Protestant reformer, John Calvin, transformed the Western theology and law of sex, marriage, and family life. Understanding marriage as a divine covenant with distinct and discernible goods and goals, Calvin gave new grounds to old rules prohibiting illicit sexual unions, polygamy, adultery,…[Read more]

A brief argument in favor of responsible sexual intimacy and taking parental responsibility for the children that are produced. A one-time act of making life – just like a one-time act of taking life – can trigger a lifetime of responsibilities.

This brief Article defends the Supreme Court case of Pleasant Grove v. Summum (2009), which upheld a longstanding display of a privately-donated Decalogue monument in a public city park. Old religious displays in public life like this deserve greater deference, and the First Amendment Establishment Clause should not provide a taxpayer with a…[Read more]

A brief review of Luther’s two kingdoms theory compared to biblical teachings and to the American doctrine of separation of church and state.

This Article analyzes the little explored late medieval and early modern household manuals that provided European and North American parents, children, and other household members with detailed instructions on their domestic, spiritual, emotional, and social responsibilities to God, neighbor, and self. The manuals outlined the duties of love,…[Read more]

This brief article shows the limits of arguments against religious polygamy that are based on the Bible, tradition, public health, child welfare, or public policy. It instead argues that polygamy is a malum in se offense, something that is inherently wrong or too often the cause, consequence, or corollary of wrongdoing. Polygamy cannot be…[Read more]

Early modem Calvinists produced a rich tradition of natural law and natural rights thought that shaped the law and politics of Protestant lands. The German-born Calvinist jurist Johannes Althusius produced one of the most original Calvinist natural law theories at the turn of the seventeenth century. Althusius argued for the natural qualities of a…[Read more]

This is an appreciative review of a classic text on medieval church-state relations by the leading medieval historian of his day, Brian Tierney. The text documents the enduring power of medieval struggles for religious freedom and for balancing church-state relations. It also documents the precocious medieval development of modern legal concepts…[Read more]