Petri, Dennis P. Archives

“Constitutions Address Religious Freedom, but Not as Much as Desired” by Dennis Petri and Jonathan Fox

Mar 27, 2025Canopy ForumEssaysConstitutional Law, Fox, Jonathan, March 2025, Petri, Dennis P., Religious Freedom

The Village Lawyer by Pieter Brueghel (US-PD). The following essay is reprinted and adapted on Canopy Forum in collaboration with the journal Derecho en Sociedad, a biannual electronic publication that is free and open access. Their issue 19(1) features full length articles in Spanish and English. Read Petri and Fox’s long-form essay on Constitutions Address of Religious Freedom here. See other…

“Lifting the Mask on Undetected Religious Freedom Violations” by Dennis P. Petri

Nov 20, 2024Rachael OrbetaSeriesLatin America (Geography), November 2024, Petri, Dennis P., Religious Freedom

Costa Rican Pacific Coast, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) This article is part of our virtual symposium and essay series, “Masking Religious Freedom Violations.” Read more here. In 2006, Brian Grim and Roger Finke noted that religion was largely absent from international quantitative studies, partly due to a lack of high-quality data. Today, this gap…

“Violence in Nigeria: discussion of the statistical evidence for the disproportionate targeting of Christians” by Dennis P. Petri & John Bainbridge

Sep 11, 2024Canopy ForumEssaysAfrica (Geography), Christianity, Human Rights / Civil Rights, Petri, Dennis P.

Makoko Lagos, Nigeria by Collins Okoh (CC BY-SA 4.0) A longstanding debate in the social sciences concerns whether violence in civil conflicts targets specific groups or is indiscriminate. Security scholar Stathis Kalyvas, in his 2006 seminal book The Logic of Violence in Civil War, argues that indiscriminate violence is less likely when actors have high…

“The Violent Incidents Database: A Social Innovation for Religious Freedom” by Dennis P. Petri and Kyle Wisdom

May 7, 2024Canopy ForumEssaysLatin America (Geography), May 2024, Petri, Dennis P., Religious Freedom, Wisdom, Kyle

Casa de la Libertad (Freedom House) in Sucre, Bolivia by Dan Lundberg (CC BY-SA 2.0). The Growing Sophistication of Religious Freedom Monitoring When considering research and political attention for religious freedom, we have really come a long way. For a long time, secularization theory was dominant in social sciences. Back in the nineteenth century, German…

“An Illustrative Approach to Religious Freedom Violations in Nigeria” by Dennis P. Petri

Sep 28, 2023Canopy ForumEssaysChristianity, Human Rights / Civil Rights, Petri, Dennis P., Philosophy of Religion, September 2023

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…

“Religious Regulation and Discrimination in Venezuela” by Dennis Petri

Jul 13, 2023Canopy ForumEssaysChristianity, Criminal Law, Latin America (Geography), Petri, Dennis P.

Religion in Isla Margarita, Valle del Espíritu Santo by Wilfredor (CC0 1.0). This essay seeks to illustrate the state of religious freedom in Venezuela by analyzing the factors that affect its free exercise. First, it describes the presence of religious communities in the country and their relationship with the government. Second, it reviews the regulatory…

“Politics and Religion in Cuba and Nicaragua” by Dennis P. Petri

Apr 29, 2023Canopy ForumEssaysApril 2023, Christianity, Latin America (Geography), Petri, Dennis P., Religious Freedom

“Cristo Church, Havana, Cuba” by Roberts & Co., Havana (CC0). The Regulation of Religion in Communist Cuba Religious groups have been viewed with suspicion by the Cuban government for a long time, as they are seen as potential threats to the socialist state. This distrust has led to subtle forms of repression, such as surveillance…