This accessible introduction tells the American story of religious liberty from its colonial beginnings to the latest Supreme Court cases. The authors provide extensive analysis of the formation of the First Amendment religion clauses and the plausible original intent or understanding of the founders. They describe the enduring principles of American religious freedom--liberty of conscience, free exercise of religion, religious equality, religious pluralism, separation of church and state, and no establishment of religion--as those principles were developed by the founders and applied by the Supreme Court. Successive chapters analyze the two hundred plus Supreme Court cases on religious freedom--on the free exercise of religion, the roles of government and religion in education, the place of religion in public life, and the interaction of religious organizations and the state. A final chapter shows how favorably American religious freedom compares with international human rights norms and European Court of Human Rights case law. Lucid, comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and balanced, this volume is an ideal classroom text and armchair paperback. Detailed appendices offer drafts of each of the religion clauses debated in 1788 and 1789, a table of all state constitutional laws on religious freedom, and a summary of every Supreme Court case on religious liberty from 1815 to 2015. Throughout the volume, the authors address frankly and fully the hot button issues of our day: religious freedom versus sexual liberty, freedom of conscience and its limitations, religious group rights and the worries about abuse, faith-based legal systems and their place in liberal democracies, and the fresh rise of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Christianity in America and abroad. For this new edition, the authors have updated each chapter in light of new scholarship and new Supreme Court case law (through the 2015 term) and have added an appendix mapping some of the cutting edge issues of religious liberty and church-state relations.

Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment

History

Witte, Jr., John

Americas

Oxford University Press

The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism

John Calvin developed arresting new teachings on rights and liberties, church and state, and religion and politics that shaped the law of Protestant lands. Calvin's original teachings were periodically challenged by major crises - the French Wars of Religion, Dutch Revolt, the English Civil War, American colonization, and American Revolution. In each such crisis moment, a major Calvinist figure emerged - Theodore Beza, Johannes Althusius, John Milton, John Winthrop, John Adams, and others - who modernized Calvin's teachings and translated them into dramatic new legal and political reforms. This rendered early modern Calvinism one of the driving engines of Western constitutionalism. A number of basic Western laws on religious and political rights, social and confessional pluralism, federalism and constitutionalism, and more owe a great deal to this religious movement. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of history, law, religion, politics, ethics, human rights, and the Protestant Reformation.

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Cambridge University Press

The Sins of the Fathers: The Law and Theology of Illegitimacy Reconsidered

For nearly two millennia, Western law visited the sins of fathers and mothers upon their illegitimate children, subjecting them to systematic discrimination and deprivation. The graver the sins of their parents, the further these children fell in social standing and legal protection. While some reformers have sought to better the plight of illegitimate children, only in recent decades has illegitimacy lost its full legal sting. Yet the social, economic, and psychological costs of illegitimacy still remain high even in the liberal, affluent West. John Witte analyzes and critiques the shifting historical law and theology of illegitimacy. This doctrine, he argues, misinterprets basic biblical teachings on individual accountability and Christian community. It also betrays basic democratic principles of equality, dignity, and natural rights of all. There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents, Witte concludes, and he presses for the protection and rights of all children, regardless of their birth status.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation

The Lutheran Reformation of the early sixteenth century brought about immense and far-reaching change in the structures of church and state, and in religious and secular ideas. This book investigates the relationship between the law and religious ideology in Luther's Germany, showing how they developed in response to the momentum of Lutheran teachings and influence. John Witte, Jr. argues that it is not enough to understand the Reformation in either only theological or legal terms but that a perspective is required which takes proper account of both.

John Calvin developed arresting new teachings on rights and liberties, church and state, and religion and politics that shaped the law of Protestant lands. Calvin's original teachings were periodically challenged by major crises - the French Wars of Religion, Dutch Revolt, the English Civil War, American colonization, and American Revolution. In each such crisis moment, a major Calvinist figure emerged - Theodore Beza, Johannes Althusius, John Milton, John Winthrop, John Adams, and others - who modernized Calvin's teachings and translated them into dramatic new legal and political reforms. This rendered early modern Calvinism one of the driving engines of Western constitutionalism. A number of basic Western laws on religious and political rights, social and confessional pluralism, federalism and constitutionalism, and more owe a great deal to this religious movement. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of history, law, religion, politics, ethics, human rights, and the Protestant Reformation.

For nearly two millennia, Western law visited the sins of fathers and mothers upon their illegitimate children, subjecting them to systematic discrimination and deprivation. The graver the sins of their parents, the further these children fell in social standing and legal protection. While some reformers have sought to better the plight of illegitimate children, only in recent decades has illegitimacy lost its full legal sting. Yet the social, economic, and psychological costs of illegitimacy still remain high even in the liberal, affluent West. John Witte analyzes and critiques the shifting historical law and theology of illegitimacy. This doctrine, he argues, misinterprets basic biblical teachings on individual accountability and Christian community. It also betrays basic democratic principles of equality, dignity, and natural rights of all. There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents, Witte concludes, and he presses for the protection and rights of all children, regardless of their birth status.

Religious Studies

This newly revised and enlarged edition of John Witte's authoritative historical study explores the interplay of law, theology, and marriage in the Western tradition. Witte uncovers the core beliefs that formed the theological genetic code of Western marriage and family law. He explores the systematic models of marriage developed by Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, and Enlightenment thinkers, and the transformative influence of each model on Western marriage law. In addition, he traces the millennium-long reduction of marriage from a complex spiritual, social, contractual, and natural institution into a simple private contract with freedom of entrance, exercise, and exit for husband and wife alike. This second edition updates and expands each chapter and the bibliography. It also includes three new chapters on classical, biblical, and patristic sources.

From Sacrament to Contract, Second Edition: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition

Westminster/John Knox Press

There are three things that people will die for -- their faith, their freedom, and their family. This volume focuses on all three, including the interactions among them, in the Western tradition and today. Retrieving and reconstructing a wealth of material from the earliest Hebrew and Greek texts of the West to the latest machinations of the Supreme Court, John Witte explores the legal and theological foundations of authority and liberty, equality and dignity, rights and duties, marriage and family, crime and punishment, and similar topics. God's Joust, God's Justice is a lucid scholarly introduction to the burgeoning field of law and religion and a learned historical inquiry into the weightier matters of the law.

God's Joust, God's Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion (EUSLR))

World

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Christianity and Democracy in Global Context

In the past, Christianity has had both positive and negative influences on democracy. Christian churches have served as benevolent agents of welfare and catalysts of political reform. But they have also served as belligerent allies of repression and censors of human rights. Christian theology has helped to cultivate democratic ideas of equality, liberty, and responsibility. But it has also helped to perpetuate repressive ideas of statism, elitism, and chauvinism. In the future, Christian attitudes and actions concerning democracy will face a formidable challenge - both from inside and outside of the Christian community. From inside, new liberation and ecumenical movements will continue to challenge Christianity to lend greater aid to the poor and the oppressed and greater support to the cause of political reform and renewal. From outside, the collapse of socialist ideologies, the emergence of Islam, and the growing secularization of the West will challenge Christianity to develop a more coherent and consistent teaching on democratic law and politics.This collection brings together leading politicians, clerics, and academics of a variety of political positions and Christian persuasions to debate what Christianity has contributed in the past and what it should contribute in the future to the shape of democratic government around the world. It is a crucial contribution to current thought on religion and politics.

Christianity And Democracy In Global Context

Westview Press

Religion And The American Constitutional Experiment: Essential Rights And Liberties

This volume offers a novel reading of the American constitutional experiment in religious liberty. The First Amendment, John Witte argues, is a synthesis of both the theological convictions and the political calculations of the eighteenth-century American founders. The founders incorporated six interdependent principles into the First Amendment—liberty of conscience, freedom of exercise, equality of faiths, plurality of confessions, disestablishment of religion, and separation of church and state. Both the nuance and the balance of these six principles have often been lost on current interpreters of the First Amendment. Particularly the Supreme Court has tended to reduce the First Amendment to mechanical tests and metaphorical formulae that often replace, rather than guide, its analysis and application of these principles. First Amendment doctrine today has thus become notoriously confused, casuistic, and self-contradictory.Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment urges a return to the principled approach to religious rights, evident both in the American founding era and in the modern international human rights movement. Witte uses these principles to analyze the free exercise and establishment case law of the last two centuries. He then illustrates the virtues of his principled approach through analysis of the thorny contests over tax exemptions for religions, the role of religion in the public school, among others.This lucid and engaging volume serves both as a provocative primer for students and a pristine restatement for specialists in law, religion, history, politics, and American studies. Through a fresh reading of the sources and cases, and through the discovery and introduction of several new materials, the author reclaims the essential value, vigor, and vitality of our most cherished religious rights and liberties.

University, John Witte Jr. Emory

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Books by Witte, Jr., John

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Witte, Jr., John. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment

The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism

The Sins of the Fathers: The Law and Theology of Illegitimacy Reconsidered

Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation

The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism

The Sins of the Fathers: The Law and Theology of Illegitimacy Reconsidered

From Sacrament to Contract, Second Edition: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition

God's Joust, God's Justice: Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion (EUSLR))

Christianity And Democracy In Global Context

Religion And The American Constitutional Experiment: Essential Rights And Liberties