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Public Discourse and Reasonable Pluralism: Rethinking the Requirements of Neutrality

H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr.

David E. Guinn (ed.)

in Handbook of Bioethics and Religion

This chapter explores the view that religious claims have no legitimate place in the public forum. This exploration involves a critical re-examination of the public versus private distinction that ... More

This chapter explores the view that religious claims have no legitimate place in the public forum. This exploration involves a critical re-examination of the public versus private distinction that would place religious commitments and grounds for action in a sphere isolated from that of public discourse and public choice. In the process, this chapter brings into question John Rawls's defense of a public discourse that seeks to marginalize religious commitments.Less

Religion as Spirituality: Sacred Lands

Michael D. McNally

in Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment

This chapter examines the failure in the courts of Native appeals to religious freedom protections for sacred lands, and it extends the previous chapter's analysis of the reception of Native claims ... More

This chapter examines the failure in the courts of Native appeals to religious freedom protections for sacred lands, and it extends the previous chapter's analysis of the reception of Native claims to religion as religion. Where a religious claim conforms to the subjective, interior spirituality that has become naturalized in the United States, it has worked reasonably well in the courts. This is emphatically not the case where claims involve religious relationships with, uses of, and obligations to, land. The chapter explains how courts reason their way out of taking steps to protect Native American religious freedom when sacred places are threatened, a puzzling matter in that courts consistently acknowledge the sincerity of the religious beliefs and practices associated with those sacred places. Along the way the chapter develops a fuller sense of the workings of the discourse of Native American spirituality as it comes to control judicial comprehension of Native religious freedom claims.Less

Can Faith be Discussed?

Paul Helm

in Faith with Reason

This chapter examines the thesis that religious claims can be debated and discussed in a philosophical vein in a similar way to, say, scientific or political claims. It distinguishes two broad views ... More

This chapter examines the thesis that religious claims can be debated and discussed in a philosophical vein in a similar way to, say, scientific or political claims. It distinguishes two broad views of faith, evidential deficiency and evidential proportion. The evidential deficiency view sees religious faith, and particularly religious trust, as making up for gaps in the evidence for the religious claims believed by adopting a degree of certitude not warranted by the evidence. The evidential proportion view of faith sees the cognitive element in faith as being correlated with evidence: weak evidence, weak belief; strong evidence, strong belief. The believer should strive to conform the strength of his beliefs to the strength of the evidence for the proposition or propositions believed. Aside from the beliefs arising from evidence, however, there are beliefs arising from a person's awareness of his own needs and goals. These further beliefs turn the object of belief into an object of trust, although actual trust requires action beyond belief.Less

Contested Truths

Jack Tannous

in The Making of the Medieval Middle East

This chapter details how people dealt with doctrinal difference in the post-Chalcedonian Middle East. Some of the ways in which disagreement was handled include violence. Another route a Christian ... More

This chapter details how people dealt with doctrinal difference in the post-Chalcedonian Middle East. Some of the ways in which disagreement was handled include violence. Another route a Christian leader might take was persuasion and argument. Indeed, a culture of debate was part of the landscape of this period before the sixth century and well after it; debates might be between Christians and non-Christians, as well as both formal and informal; and it is a traditional scholarly focus on this form of dealing with post-Chalcedonian religious difference that can be credited for giving the impression that the late Roman Middle East was an enormous patristic seminar run amok. The tendency toward dispute was a result of several factors: the religious diversity of the Middle East, coupled with the Christian impulse to mission and conversion, and a belief in the exclusive truth of its religious claims.Less

Religion as Cultural Resource: Environmental and Historic Preservation Law

Michael D. McNally

in Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment

This chapter explores what results when Native peoples articulate religious claims in the language of culture and cultural resources under environmental and historic preservation law. It argues that ... More

This chapter explores what results when Native peoples articulate religious claims in the language of culture and cultural resources under environmental and historic preservation law. It argues that cultural resource laws have become more fruitful in two respects. First, there is more emphatic insistence on government-to-government consultation between federal agencies and tribes. Second, in 1990, National Historic Preservation Act regulations were clarified by designating “Traditional Cultural Properties” as eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places and in 1992, that law was amended to formally engage tribal governments in the review process. In light of these developments, protection under the categories of culture and cultural resource have proved more capacious for distinctive Native practices and beliefs about sacred lands, but it has come at the expense of the clearer edge of religious freedom protections, while still being haunted, and arguably bedraggled, by the category of religion from which these categories ostensibly have been formally disentangled.Less

The Desecularization of the Middle East Conflict: From a Conflict between States to a Conflict between Religious Communities

Hans G. Kippenberg

in Secularization and the World Religions

This chapter discusses the international prohibition on violence and religious claims on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. It deals with the shift in the interpretation of the Middle East ... More

This chapter discusses the international prohibition on violence and religious claims on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. It deals with the shift in the interpretation of the Middle East conflict, examining when and why the parties ceased to interpret the Middle East conflict in a secular way and embraced a religious perspective and how this affected their actions.Less

The Moment of Truth: Comparative and Dogmatic Theology

Aaron Langenfeld

in How to Do Comparative Theology

Aaron Langenfeld reflects on how the discipline of comparative theology should be related to the normative grounds for religious truth claims to which theology as a whole is committed. Confirming a ... More

Aaron Langenfeld reflects on how the discipline of comparative theology should be related to the normative grounds for religious truth claims to which theology as a whole is committed. Confirming a fundamental characteristic of comparative theology, he proposes that this challenge cannot be met if the question of truth is neglected; rather, it must be preserved as the central focus in concrete comparative work. To justify this proposition, in his Christian-Muslim work on salvation Langenfeld elaborates a fundamental insight regarding the Muslim critique of Christian anthropology, particularly regarding the concept of original sin, which is presumed in the Christian understanding of salvation and redemption. Langenfeld suggests we can see more easily how comparative theology really does proceed like other substantive forms of theology and thus is fairly measured by familiar theological standards, even if breaking new ground interreligiously.Less

A Meditation on Intellectual Humility, or on a Fusion of Epistemic Ignorance and Covenantal Certainty

Stanislaw Krajewski

in Learned Ignorance: Intellectual Humility among Jews, Christians and Muslims

This chapter reflects on the merits of pluralism by developing the idea of intellectual humility. Drawing upon the Torah, it first describes Moses' leadership not as courageous or wise but rather as ... More

This chapter reflects on the merits of pluralism by developing the idea of intellectual humility. Drawing upon the Torah, it first describes Moses' leadership not as courageous or wise but rather as only very humble. It then examines a sense of the truth as universal, or absolute or relative. Each of these perceptions of the truth brings in their wake problems when they confront claims of competing truth. How should one think about the source of such claims, which is to say, how should one think about God? Next, it turns to the topic of religious pluralism in both its subjectivist and objectivist forms. It uses the notion of oscillation, and applies it to the objectivist and subjectivist approaches to religious claims. Finally, it returns to the problematic meaning of Israel as “chosen.” It argues that true dialogue allows for total respect for all sides involved through a combined awareness of both epistemic ignorance and convenantal certainty.Less

Zionism Reconsidered

Jerome Slater

in Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020

In some ways, Zionism is legitimate and persuasive, but in other ways it has undermined the possibilities of Israeli peace with the Arab world. The argument that the history of murderous ... More

In some ways, Zionism is legitimate and persuasive, but in other ways it has undermined the possibilities of Israeli peace with the Arab world. The argument that the history of murderous anti-Semitism, culminating in the Holocaust, justified the creation of a Jewish state, somewhere, was strong. However, the arguments that the Jews had an eternal right to Palestine were weak. The religious claim that God gave Palestine to the Jews is challenged by Christian and Islamic counterclaims. The argument that 2,000 years ago the Jews were predominant in Palestine until they were driven out by the Romans has long been shown by archaeologists and historians to have little foundation. Even if true, it would be irrelevant to establishing a convincing claim for exclusive Jewish sovereignty today. Likewise, the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate to Britain, the basis for the Zionist claims based on modern history, were simply colonialist impositions.Less