Canopy Forum is a digital publication from the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. Our contributors deliver expert analysis on important issues of law and religion around the world.
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This upcoming online symposium and essay series will explore various aspects of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Read more about how to participate and submit your essay. Registration details coming soon.
Lagos, Nigeria by Nupo Deyon Daniel on Unsplash. Nigeria is a multi-ethnic and culturally diverse federation of 36 autonomous states and the Federal Capital Territory. The political landscape is partly dominated by the ruling All Progressives Congress party (APC), which controls the executive arm of government and holds majority seats at both the Senate and…
Religion and Identity in an Age of IndividualizationTed A. Smith Excerpted from The End of Theological Education by Ted A. Smith (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Individualized Religion Social theorists have sometimes described modernity as relegating religion to the private sphere. A range of legal and cultural disestablishments did unhook religion…
Picture of The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria by James Gordon (CC BY 2.0) This article is part of our “Reassessing Democracy: Contemporary Perspectives” series. If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Since the 9.11 attacks and subsequent Global War on Terror, one of the major fields of study related to…
Image: Church Altar Pews (Pixabay) This article is part of our “Reassessing Democracy: Contemporary Perspectives” series. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. T here is no single Catholic political philosophy. Some intellectuals, like twentieth-century philosopher Heinrich Rommen, have even suggested that “Catholic political philosophy” is a contradiction in terms, given the…
Picture of the Chicago Skyline from Grant Park in by James Conkis (CC BY-SA 4.0). This essay is an introduction to our thematic series, “Reassessing Democracy: Contemporary Christian and Islamic Perspectives.” How do religious communities approach democracy? What religious beliefs, practices, and histories inform those views? And what does democracy look like when viewed through…
Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. Throughout its history, capitalism has been met with harsh religious resistance and objections. Today, both Islam and Christianity continue to criticize capitalist economies and societies for injustice, exploitation, and the concept of humanity. In such criticism of economy and society, actors refer to religious ideas to reinterpret their situation, ideas…
Picture of the Supremo Tribunal Federal in Brazil by Dennis W. Asfour (CC BY-SA 4.0). In Brazil, the constitutional preamble of the 1988 Federal Constitution contains the expression “under the protection of God,” which has sparked debates for many years regarding its legally binding relevance. A landmark decision (the ADI 2076) even addressed whether the…
Heraclitus, ‘the weeping philosopher’, by Johannes Moreelse (PD-US). The human inclination to search for timeless and transcendent truths, and transform them into laws that promote justice, is deeply rooted in our collective consciousness. It also lies at the heart of classical natural law theory, which has its roots in ancient Greek philosophy and Christian theology.…
Abraham and the Angels by Andries Snellinck (PD-US). What is the relationship between faith and constitutional interpretation? Superficially understood, this could refer to popular polemic of taking the specific religious faiths (religious affiliations) of Supreme Court justices, reducing these affiliations to political opinions, and construing these observations with the justice’s interpretive ideology. More esoterically, “faith”…
James West investigating the Constitution. From NASA (PD-US). Let’s explore an out of the ordinary way of thinking about the relation between religion and accounts of constitutional interpretation. In a recent article, I argued against the theory of “original public meaning” in constitutional and other legal interpretation, pointing to a “distinct, deadly, bit of intractable…