Search Results

This chapter focuses on the disruptive religious revivals of the 1740s and 1750s, known as the First Great Awakening. It explores how the impressive mobility and astonishing popularity of itinerant ministers gave new meaning to the right of private judgment. It also documents the rash of revival-inspired church separations, which broadened the range of religious alternatives and undermined traditional religious authority. The travails of a humble minister named Ebenezer Parkman dramatize the sometimes painful consequences of religious diversity, as well as its liberating possibilities.

This chapter considers how young Islamist activists construct religious authority. To engage these questions, the author asked and allowed activists to construct for themselves what authority meant to them, with some even drawing an evolving organizational chart of their movements. The author observed signs of ambiguity, multiplicity, and even inconsistency. Some activists sought to go out of their way to illustrate that they were not under the control of any kind of religious authority, even conceiving something called “religion” as very much distinct from their work. Others blurred these categories, preferring to place their activism under the domain of some kind of religious authority, both explaining and attempting to show how it is part and parcel of their everyday existence. Some failed to mention religion as important to their work at all. Others spoke solely of it.

Louis Jacobs, (1920-2006), a British scholar-rabbi, became embroiled in the so-called “Jacobs Affair” in the 1960s, a controversy generally associated with his views on divine revelation. Influenced by his encounter with academic biblical scholarship, Jacobs tried to construct an apologetic account of how to maintain belief in Torah min Hashamayim— Torah from Heaven — while addressing secularist challenges to these teachings. Highlighting divisions between more conservative and liberal currents within Orthodox Judaism, Jacobs was effectively ostracised from British Orthodoxy for his efforts. Yet the challenge he sought to address has not gone away. Instead, there is growing engagement with the issue, with the internet increasingly influencing the contours and content of this debate. The questions directed at the dogmatic accounts of revelation promulgated within Orthodoxy form part of a broader challenge to religious authority. A study of Jacobs’ position, alongside some more contemporary arguments developed in a post-secular context, offers a framework for considering the varied apologetic Jewish responses that have been formulated to defend divine teachings against secularist critiques.

The essays in Part III of the book, on liberal constraints and traditionalist education, argue for a more regulatory conception of liberal education and emphasize the need for some controls over cultural and religious educational authority. Walter Feinberg’s essay, on religious education in liberal–democratic societies in relation to the question of accountability and autonomy, takes up the issue of educational constraints with respect to religious schools in such societies. While he allows that religious education need not be inconsistent with liberal goals, and can find reasons why some liberal societies feel it appropriate to provide public support for religious schools, he argues that certain conditions can render such support tyrannical and unwise. He concludes that if the conditions are appropriate for public support of religious schools, then there should also be significant public control. After an introduction in Section 14.1, the chapter has six further sections: Section 14.2 discusses some of the potential lines of conflict between religious liberal education and public (common) education; Section 14.3 examines a number of arguments that have been advanced in support of public funding for religious schools; Section 14.4 looks at a potentially fundamental reason for denying public funding for religious schools – that it would be tyrannical to take tax funds from one believer in order to advance the beliefs of another – and the implications as regards the First Amendment to the United States Constitution; both Sections 14.4 and 14.5 suggest some of the conditions that need to be satisfied in order to supply this funding – primarily that it must be predicated on the school advancing individual and social autonomy; Section 14.6 briefly suggests what such an arrangement might entail for the traditional way in which the public/private divide is conceived; Section 14.7 concludes.

This chapter explores the vital paradoxes in Baptists' understanding of the relationship between religious and political authority. It begins by examining the debates over church and state in Virginia. In North Carolina, disestablishment occurred relatively quickly and with much less public debate. In Virginia, however, the process of disestablishment involved a complicated negotiation among different civil and sectarian factions that carried on for years and ultimately resulted in a far-reaching statement for religious liberty. The chapter then turns to Baptists' involvement in political debates and political culture in the early republic.

This chapter suggests that the representations of religion in young Islamists' lives are not the product of prevarication, but rather of personalization. Religious authority has become circulated to such an extent that it has come to mean multiple things to multiple members. In the midst of this diversification, political party members increasingly appropriate the authority to interpret and represent what “Islam” means or should mean to others. None of these myriad representations constitutes “lies.” Instead, these words and constructions represent and reflect members' own strategic desires for themselves. The chapter shows how the haraka represents for some a site for religious study, a place of Qurʾanic learning unfettered by politics. For others, it is a place to make contacts and to get ahead: an instrumental, not ideological, site. For still others, it serves as a strategic site, a place to try out new ideas, and even as a convenient scapegoat. And, yet, for others, it is completely ignored; it simply has no place in their lives as party members.

This chapter examines the impact of Bellarmine’s theory in the debate over the Oath of Allegiance, promulgated by James Stuart in 1606. James’s attempt to shift the boundaries of the sovereign’s authority beyond simple civil obedience hit the heart of Bellarmine’s doctrine of the indirecta potestas, which was introduced precisely to shift the boundaries of the Pope’s spiritual jurisdiction beyond simple spiritual authority, and indirectly into political matters. This chapter shows the theoretical and political impact of Bellarmine’s theory in early Stuart England by following closely the debate between Bellarmine, James and William Barclay. This chapter, thus, offers important elements not only to understand the significance of the Jesuit’s theories but also to gain a more accurate and historically nuanced explanation of James’s absolutism and its theoretical roots.

This chapter argues that young Islamists' constructions of authority are complex and multilayered. They have personalized religious authority by circulating it away from a single reading of a single figure, even one as supposedly central as their “guide.” They have re-appropriated and reconfigured the organization Yassine once established and the scope and the range of the guide's substantive reach. They have even re-appropriated Yassine's memory. From spiritual guide to secular politician, the roles assigned to the head of their organization are constructed to fit their own desires, and, in so doing, they preserve and embrace individual choice, making room for multiple voices within their movement.

The essays in Part III of the book, on liberal constraints and traditionalist education, argue for a more regulatory conception of liberal education and emphasize the need for some controls over cultural and religious educational authority. Susan Okin, in her essay on group rights, gender, and realistic rights of exit, is mostly concerned, not with the oppression of traditional groups by the liberal state, but with the oppression of individuals, and especially of girls and women, by the traditional community. She is critical of those liberal theorists who argue that a right of exit is sufficient to qualify a cultural or religious group for special recognition in liberal societies, and to counter these views, she notes that the unequal treatment of girls and women can mean that even though they may have a formal right to exit a group, their actual opportunities for doing so are far less adequate than those of their male counterparts. She holds, then, that the right of exit is not sufficient and that the liberal state should have a higher requirement, namely, that girls and women should be treated fairly within the group and thus should be able to take advantage of any formal right of exit. The chapter is arranged in three sections: Section 12.1, Gender and Other Forms of Inequality in Group Rights Theories, shows, by looking at three examples of liberal defenders (as exemplified by Joseph Raz, William Galston, and Chandran Kukathas) of group rights, that they tend not to take gender inequality seriously when considering group rights and limitations; Section 12.2, Cultural Factors Affecting Women’s Realistic Rights of Exit, specifies and discusses a number of reasons that contribute to women being significantly less able than men, in many cultural contexts, to chart their own courses of life outside their community of origin; and Section 12.3. Rights of Exit and Realistic Rights of Exit for Women, concludes that the theories examined contain several problematic elements concerning rights of exit for women.

The essays in Part III of the book, on liberal constraints and traditionalist education, argue for a more regulatory conception of liberal education and emphasize the need for some controls over cultural and religious educational authority. In the last chapter, on liberalism and group rights, according to Stephen Macedo, while the commitment of liberalism to individual freedom and equality is far more easily reconciled with group-based remedies for group-based inequalities than the critics of liberalism allow, the liberal commitment to freedom of association imposes limits on group recognition by insisting on intragroup openness and diversity. The chapter has two main parts. Section 15.1, Liberalism, Education, and Group Identities, rebuts the charge that a liberal public philosophy embraces a narrow individualism that is incompatible with tackling group-based forms of inequality, and surveys some of the myriad liberal reforms of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s that promoted more equal respect for differing group identities, especially in schools. Section 15.2, Special Exemptions and the Rights of Traditional Communities, focuses on the difficulties raised by “traditionalistic” groups that seek special accommodations in part because they reject liberal values of equal freedom for all, and makes the point that a liberal regime should not seek to be equally hospitable or accommodating to groups that accept and those that reject educational policies designed to promote the equal freedom of all persons; various examples are presented and discussed.

Taking a complementary approach to ch. 3, this chapter examines the reason and the will of (elect) Christians, who are in receipt of sanctifying (and justifying) grace. Hooker’s views on justification are discussed initially, where it is argued that although throughout his life he was a firm advocate of forensic theory, he moved in the Lawes and his late writings to the position that justification can be lost, and then subsequently regained with the aid of repentance, and that in this context it makes sense to speak of a person congruously meriting justification. This is then allied to his views on sanctification, involving a discussion of the three theological virtues, mortal and venial sin, and supererogation, all of which are again contrasted with the approach of contemporary Reformed theology. Then moves on to look at Hooker’s views on the interaction between Christians and the Holy Spirit, principally through the authentication and interpretation of Holy Scripture, and knowledge of election, all of which say a good deal about his theological development. This makes an excellent springboard for a final analysis of religious authority, where it is argued that Hooker, as has traditionally been claimed, upheld the authority of scripture, reason, and tradition, in that order, contrary to the Reformed, and more generally Protestant, doctrine of sola scriptura.

This chapter discusses secularism as a political project with its own utopian elements. Secularism refers to the growing importance of scientific knowledge that is not constrained by religious authority. Religion is sometimes taken to be an obstacle for scientific progress and secularism demands its removal for the benefit of societal development that is guided by scientific discovery and technological innovation. Secularization was seen by sociologists as an intrinsic and inescapable part of the modernization of Western society, with the assumption that this was something all societies had to go through. An alternative to post-Weberian arguments in sociology about religion and secularity is offered by theories that emphasize individual, rational choice in religious markets.

The essays in Part III of the book, on liberal constraints and traditionalist education, argue for a more regulatory conception of liberal education and emphasize the need for some controls over cultural and religious educational authority. Rob Reich’s essay, on multicultural accommodations in education, proposes that the liberal state needs to rethink its commitment to cultural groups whose educational agendas advance the integrity of the group over and against the freedom and equality of its members, and that thus educate in ways that place strict limits on the autonomy and critical thinking skills of their members. He aims to examine two prominent defenses of multiculturalism, showing how each pays insufficient attention to the tension between cultural groups: Avishai Margalit and Moshe Halbertal argue that, because individuals have a ‘right to culture’, the state must grant groups a status that may flout the rights of some individuals, conditioned on the ability of those individuals to exit; Will Kymlicka, in a far more sophisticated version of multiculturalism, defends cultural rights, and accommodations, but only for those cultural groups that are themselves internally liberal (except in rare circumstances) and that take seriously the value of personal autonomy. Reich contends that, while the freedom to exit from a group is important, the group rights supported by Margalit and Halbertal may serve to disable or severely impoverish the ability of children to exit from groups; further, he contends that, while personal autonomy is important, Kymlicka’s conception of autonomy is unsatisfactory and, moreover, his defense of rights to separate schooling for national minorities and to educational exemptions for some polyethnic groups leaves him open to the same critique about exit that Reich levies against Margalit and Halbertal. Along the way, Reich comments on the odd fixation of multiculturalists on rights of exit.

Begins the second part of the book, examining Hooker’s views on the relation of grace to the human reason and will, in this case from the perspective of non-Christians, who are not in receipt of sanctifying grace. This permits a study of Hooker’s views on human nature, natural law, and original sin, and it is argued that although Hooker accepts that humanity in its natural state after the Fall is totally depraved, through his belief that humans are generally aided by common grace he is able to adopt a relatively optimistic view of humanity’s ability to know and to obey natural law, and to accept the religious authority of reason in religious as well as civil affairs. Hooker’s views are contextualised in the Reformed theology of his day, and it is shown how the nature of the earlier Admonitions controversy helped Hooker in the development of such ideas, and to criticise fundamental aspects of the Reformed tradition through attacking presbyterianism and puritanism. Finally, examines how a lack of understanding of Hooker’s views on common grace has led to critical misinterpretation of his work in the past.

The essays in Part III of the book, on liberal constraints and traditionalist education, argue for a more regulatory conception of liberal education and emphasize the need for some controls over cultural and religious educational authority. Kevin McDonough’s essay, on multinational civic education, develops a conception of this that allows for both federal and minority national groups to reinforce conditional civic attachments. This ‘conditionalist’ view of civic education is necessary in multinational federal societies, he argues, because appeals to one set of national attachments may exacerbate rather than alleviate particular injustices in particular circumstances. For example, McDonough argues that when aboriginal women and children are the victims of injustice at the hands of tribal institutions and leaders, they must be able to appeal to their fellow non-aboriginal citizens and federal institutions for assistance, although this is not possible unless citizens – aboriginal and otherwise – have come to regard attachments to the minority nation as conditional rather than absolute. Similarly, citizens whose primary identification is to the federal society must be able to recognize that some of their fellow citizens legitimately have a minority nation as the object of their primary loyalty – otherwise, efforts to support federal intervention in minority national affairs will be vulnerable to forces of cultural insensitivity and arrogance, rather than of liberal justice.

This chapter applies the argument of Chapter Three again epistemic egoism to the domain of religious belief. Religious epistemic egoism must be rejected by a conscientious person. The form of common consent arguments that was defended in Chapter Three permits us to defend a version of the Consensus Gentium argument for theism. The chapter then defends epistemic authority in the domain of religious belief by applying the principles of authoritative testimony of Chapter Six. The chapter considers three models of revelation as divine testimony, and argue that the rationality of faith can be explained by my account of first person, deliberative reasons for belief.

This chapter examines the so-called Third Resurrection and the transition from Black Religion to historical Islam as the basis of religious authority in American Islam. It suggests that while the basis of religious authority shifted, African American Muslims remained objects rather than subjects in this development. It compares this situation with Edward Wilmot Blyden's 19th century argument that if White European and American missionaries in Africa did not transfer religious authority to African Christians in a timely fashion, the latter would ultimately regurgitate Christianity.