Varieties of Religious Establishment

Advocacy for religious freedom has become a global project while religion, and the management of religion, has become of increasing interest to scholars across a wider range of disciplines. Rather than adopting the common assumption that religious freedom is simply incompletely realized, the authors in this book suggest that the starting point for understanding religion in public life today should be religious establishment. In the hyper-globalized world of the politics of religious freedom today, a focus on establishments brings into view the cultural assumptions, cosmologies, anthropologies, and institutions which structure religion and religious diversity. Leading international scholars from a diverse range of disciplines explore how countries today live with religious difference and consider how considering establishments reveals the limitations of universal, multicultural, and interfaith models of religious freedom. Examining the various forms religion takes in Tunisia, Canada, Taiwan, South Africa, and the USA, amongst others, this book argues that legal protections for religious freedom can only be understood in a context of socially and culturally specific constraints.

Contents: Neighbo(u)rly misreadings and misconstruals: a cross-border conversation, Lori G. Beaman and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan; Part I Theory and Structure: Spiritual economies beyond the sacred/secular paradigm: or, what did religious freedom mean in Ancient India?, Robert A Yelle; The aesthetics of religious freedom, Benjamin L. Berger; Varieties of native Hawaiian establishment: recognized voices, routinized charisma, and church desecration, Greg Johnson. Part II Re-Telling Religio-Legal Histories: Deprivileging religion in a post-Westphalian state: shadow establishment, organization, spirituality and freedom in Canada, Peter Beyer; Religion, land, rights, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan; The implicit Sharia: established religion and varieties of secularism in Tunisia, Malika Zeghal; Church of the air: Roman Catholics, religious programming and regulation in Canadian broadcasting, 1918-2008, Mark McGowan; The five worlds of religious establishment in Taiwan, Andre Laliberte. Part III Rethinking Law's Capacities: The politics of religious establishment: recognition of Muslim marriages in South Africa, Peter G. Danchin; Thinking about cooperation and collaboration between diverse religious and secular community responses to domestic violence, Nancy Nason-Clarke and Catherine Holtmann; Legal pluralism and Shari'a in Western societies: theories and hypotheses, James T. Richardson and Victoria Springer; Index.