"Religious Freedom and the Common Good": Symposium at St. Thomas Law, March 23

Reposting this. Twin Cities and upper-Midwest readers, please come join us!

On Friday, March 23, in Minneapolis, the Law Journal at St. Thomas is sponsoring a symposium on "Religious Freedom and the Common Good." In past work, I've explored the idea that common-good-related arguments can be an important, overlooked ground for religious freedom in a society that needs to be persuaded of the importance of that principle. This conference will push that exploration further.

The program will bring together two groups--(1) social scientists who study the contributions of religion to society and (2) legal scholars, advocates, and policy analysts interested in religious freedom--for an interchange on how the two disciplines can learn from each other in the service of productive initiatives. Co-organizers are the Baylor University Institute for Study of Religion (ISR); St. Thomas's Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy (co-directed by our own Lisa Schiltz); and the Religious Freedom Institute.

Here is the conference description, with times and titles of various presentations. A little more about the speakers:

• Brian Grim (lunchtime speaker), founder of the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation, whose widely-reported study quantifies the socio-economic value that religion contributes in the US as $1.2 trillion yearly
• Byron Johnson, director of the Baylor ISR and one of the leading sociologists on the empirical contributions of religious organizations
• Anthony Picarello, general counsel and associate general secretary for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (which has made "freedom to serve others" an important part of its religious-freedom advocacy)
• Jackie Rivers, an expert on the social role and contributions of African-American churches
• Melissa Rogers, now at Brookings, who handled issues concerning faith-based institutions for the Obama White House
• Sahar Aziz, Rutgers Law School, an expert on Muslim organizations, anti-terrorism efforts, and religious-freedom issues
• Stanley Carlson-Thies, founder, Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance
• Angela Carmella, Seton Hall Law School, an expert on Catholic social thought and religious freedom
• Mark David Hall, political scientist at George Fox U., expert on the framers' understanding of religion and the common good
• Dana Mataic (with Prof. Roger Finke, Penn State U.): on the causes and consequences of religious-freedom restrictions around the world
• Yours truly

A description in text: 

     Challenges to religious freedom have become more prominent and intense in recent years, both in the US and abroad. The conflicts involve both individuals and nonprofit religious organizations, of varying faiths, and laws on matters from nondiscrimination to healthcare to national security. Arguments over these questions typically treat religious freedom as a matter of personal individual autonomy. But religious freedom may have another important dimension: the common good. Indeed, in an era of increasing skepticism toward many religious-freedom claims, the defense of religious freedom may increasingly rely on showing that it preserves space for religious groups to benefit individuals and society.

     Social scientists have done considerable research on the asserted contributions of religion and religious organizations for individual believers, for recipients of social services, and for society. But what are these contributions, and how well established are they? Moreover, what relationship do they have to religious freedom in the American tradition? Can religious freedom be justified in part based on its contributions to the common good, and how would such arguments affect the scope of religious freedom?

 

     To address these questions, this conference brings leading social scientists together with a variety of legal scholars, advocates, and policy experts. Among the topics will be the contributions of religious organizations to social services, the founders' views of religion's societal effects, the benefits and risks of religious freedom for African-Americans, the role of religious freedom in countering terrorism, a view of religious-freedom issues from within government service, and the causes and consequences of religious-freedom restrictions in various nations.

 

     Conference papers will be published in the University of St. Thomas Law Journal and, in shorter form, in other venues.