Faith Seeking Understanding: Trends in Freedom of Religion in the United States

Perry Dane (Rutgers), Faith Seeking Understanding: Trends in Freedom of Religion in the United States, La liberté de religion en question(s) (Anne Fornerod, ed. 2022) (forthcoming):

This essay on trends in American constitutional doctrine on religion and state is one of only two English-language chapters in a French volume on freedom of religion. The essay closely examines recent cases on the establishment of religion, religious institutional autonomy, and free exercise of religion. The common thread throughout is the conviction that the law of freedom of religion is not like other questions of liberal constitutionalism. It is as much about the normative and juridical sovereignty of religious institutions, communities, and traditions as it is about recognizing the rights of believers. It is related to robust conceptions of legal pluralism. And it is ultimately about a genuinely existential encounter between religion and state – an encounter in which each party tries as best it can to make sense of the reality and the claims of the other. The essay is also written, though, in the shadow of our current polarized age. It worries about religious communities that have allowed their beliefs to be co-opted by raw expressions of political identity. It insists that no religious community can just gather itself in pristine isolation. And, looking beyond the legal forum, it hopes for the possibility of a robust conversation about our collective moral sensibilities, including at least to some extent our common public theology. For that too is part of what it means to engage in a genuinely existential encounter.