"Religious Freedom and the Common Good: A Summary of Arguments and Themes"

That's the title of my introductory/overview essay, posted on SSRN, summarizing the papers from our Law Journal symposium at St. Thomas on the subject. The full set of papers is here. A couple of paragraphs from the abstract of my overview: 

       We tend to think that the common good is simply a limit on freedom: that individual and societal claims inevitably clash, that the common good stands for society’s interests in restricting the actions of individuals and private groups. But freedoms also serve social purposes. Indeed, such arguments may be increasingly important to defending the right of religious freedom in an era of skepticism toward many religious claims. Perhaps for this reason, advocates and scholars have made a discernible turn toward exploring the common good as one key rationale for religious freedom.

       But this justification of religious freedom also raises a number of important challenges and questions. They can generally be grouped into three areas: (A) What precisely is the evidence, and how strong is it, for the connection between religion and benefits to individuals and society? (B) What do religion’s social contributions have to do with religious freedom? (C) How does the common good suggest limits on the scope of religious freedom, or criticisms of religious freedom as it is practiced or claimed today?

The symposium brings together contributors from sociology, political science and history, law, and public-policy disciplinary perspectives. The roster includes Stanley Carlson-Thies, founder of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance; Angela Carmella, who writes on CST and the scope of religious freedom; Roger Finke and Dane Mataic, social scientist who do empirical work on religious restrictions around the world; Brian Grim, who gives a shortened version of his important study on the economic value of U.S. religion; Mark Hall, leading scholar on the founders' views of religion in public life, including their views on religious accommodations; Byron Johnson of Baylor's Institute for Religious Studies, among our leading sociologists on the empirical contributions of religious social-service activities; Jacqueline Rivers, sociologist and scholar of the African-American church; and Melissa Rogers, now at Brookings and formerly advisor on faith-based and community work, including religious-freedom issues, in the Obama White House.

While I'm at it, I should also commend Kathleen's Brady excellent article on the same topic, here.