Challenges to Religious Liberty in the Twenty-First Century

Challenges to Religious Liberty in the Twenty-First Century
Gerald V. Bradley
Cambridge University Press 2012

Almost everyone today affirms the importance and merit of religious liberty. But religious liberty is being challenged by new questions (for example, use of the niqab or church adoption services for same-sex couples) and new forces (such as globalization and Islamism). Combined, these make the meaning of religious liberty in the twenty-first century uncertain. This collection of chapters by ten of the world’s leading scholars on religious liberty addresses these issues. The book is arranged around five specific challenges to religious liberty today: an “originalist” interpretation of the First Amendment religion clauses, the state’s responsibility to prevent coercion and intimidation of believers by others within the same faith community, the traditional right of conscientious objection, the distinctive problems presented by globalization, and the United States’ moral responsibility to promote worldwide religious liberty.

Gerard V. Bradley has been a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame since 1992. He was previously a professor of law at the University of Illinois. Professor Bradley is a coeditor of The American Journal of Jurisprudence and author of Church–State Relations in America. He has been a senior Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute and a research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.