bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Regulating Religion
Authors: Cookson Catharine 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Religious free exercise conflicts occur when religiously compelled behavior (whether action or inaction) appears to violate a law that contraindicates or even criminalizes such behavior. Fearful of the anarchy of religious conscience, the U.S. Supreme Court opted instead for authoritarianism in this church and state matter: The state's need for civil order is conclusively presumed to be achieved by enforcing uniform obedience to generally applicable laws, and thus legislation must trump the human and constitutional right to religious freedom. Rejecting the Court's unthinking rigorism, the book more appropriately views a free exercise case as a conflict of principles or “goods”: the basic constitutional and human right to freedom of conscience and religious freedom versus the societal good furthered and protected by the legislation. The book recommends an alternative analytical free exercise process grounded within the common law tradition as well as social ethics: casuistry. Casuistical reasoning requires a careful analysis of the particulars and factual context of the case, and relies upon analogies and paradigmatic illustrations to get to the heart of the principles at issue. The book furthermore explores the panoply of theories, self‐understandings, typologies, contexts, and societal constructs at play in free exercise conflicts, and in the final chapters applies casuistry to two free exercise situations, spiritual healing methods applied to children, and ingestion of sacramental peyote in Native American Church rituals.
Introduction
Authors: Cookson Catharine 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Often, competing worldviews or “frameworks” (as described by political philosopher Charles Taylor) are at the heart of free exercise conflicts. This chapter uses the trope or myth of “wilderness” as a tool for understanding how the same concept can be interpreted in contrary ways: wilderness as a holy place of purification, as an empty place to cultivate and make bloom, or as a dangerous, licentious, uncontrolled place where anarchy rules. The myth enables us to understand how people can approach the same activity/phenomenon with such drastically different unexamined assumptions, and how there may be different ramifications, meanings, and consequences depending upon the framework in which the religious behavior is initially and intuitively viewed.
The Process of Casuistry
Authors: Cookson Catharine 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Examines and describes in detail the casuistical method of conflict resolution, noting the importance of principles, paradigms, presumptions, analogies, and “the particulars.” Casuistry is neither a technical loophole, nor a laxity born out of sympathy, nor anarchical relativism. These criticisms (which also include fear of the “abuse of casuistry” and of the “slippery slope”) are directly addressed. The chapter concludes that the process of casuistry achieves principled justice between the competing goods at issue in free exercise conflicts.
Law and Dis‐orderly Religion
Authors: Cookson Catharine 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Thoughtful proponents of religious freedom throughout the centuries have never advocated an unlimited and unfettered right. This chapter makes a searching analysis of the Western tradition (Tertullian, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Richard Hooker, Thomas Helwys, John Cotton, Roger Williams, William Penn, etc.) on the issue of the authority of the state versus sacred obligations of conscience. Four paradigms or types emerged. Two of them, the “duly ordered relationships” and the “levitical” paradigms, are conspicuously present in periods of religious oppression. In contrast, the “two kingdoms” and the “enlightenment” paradigms actively contributed to the development of religious freedom protections. In these, the state's argument is subjected to scrutiny (as opposed to a conclusive presumption in its favor) and, paradigmatically, the state has been accorded the least (if any) authority over matters of the first tablet of the Ten Commandments: the particulars of worship services, infractions against God, and the form and internal governance of God's church. Under the two kingdom's (and somewhat under the enlightenment) paradigm/type, the basic limiting premise of the free exercise clause is that its protection does not extend to religiously compelled actions which cause harm to the person, property, or privileges of citizenship of another. In these instances, the duty of the state to protect citizens from such harms is deemed paramount.
The Religiously Encumbered Self
Authors: Cookson Catharine 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
How we view the self, acting as moral agent, will inevitably affect our interpretive actions when a statute and a religious obligation conflict. The classic liberal ontology of the self (“voluntarist”) is self‐unencumbered and free to choose his or her beliefs. The natural conclusion to which the courts are led by the voluntarist conception of the self is that the religious adherent made a free and voluntary choice to break the law, an obviously bad choice. What is lost in the voluntarist conception of religious liberty is that a religious practice is not an isolated and free choice but is, rather, an integrated and integral part of a belief system or “framework.” The religious adherent is in fact an encumbered self whose world construct cannot be easily altered in order to make a choice that is alien to that framework.
Societal Boundaries, Paranoia and Ill Humor, and the Role of the Courts Under the Free Exercise Clause
Authors: Cookson Catharine 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Unusual societal flux and social stress causes fear, and a fearful, paranoid society is tempted greatly to take extreme measures to protect itself. Pressured politicians may be unable or unwilling to enact reasonably narrow and limited legislation designed to address the actual harm, and, indeed, not only may cast a wide net but also limit if not disregard individual protections under the Constitution. While the courts may be tempted (if not politically pressured) to give a conclusive presumption deferring to the legislature, this chapter argues that it is the duty of the courts, especially in times of moral panic or societal “ill humors” (Alexander Hamilton's phrase), to protect the individual's right to the free exercise of religion by a searching scrutiny of the context of each case. The courts must be exceptionally careful to understand both the religious framework within which the religiously compelled behavior is situated and the actual, paradigmatic harm anticipated by the statute.
A Critique of the Court's Free Exercise Clause Jurisprudence in the U.S. Supreme Court Case of Employment Division v. Smith
Authors: Cookson Catharine 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The 1990 case of Employment Division v. Smith was decided against the defendants, but when analyzed using casuistry it is found to be an easy case for upholding their free exercise right. The state lacked specific expert testimony and hard data against the use of sacramental peyote, while the evidence produced by the Native American Church's experts showed that the Native American Church was successful in fulfilling the paradigmatic goals of the War on Drugs (no addiction, productive lives, etc.) and that the nonaddictive sacramental peyote lacked the same social harms endemic to addictive drugs (illegal market traffic, gangs, etc.). The Court, however, ignored the particulars of the case and fixated solely on the illegality of the ingestion of peyote. Accordingly, the particulars are explored in great detail, placing the facts in their larger, societal contexts and highlighting the Court's conclusive presumption and radical deference to the state and total disregard of the facts and other particulars both of the defendants’ unemployment compensation context and of the Native American Church and its practices.
Governmental Intervention in and Punishment for the Use of Spiritual Healing Methods
Authors: Cookson Catharine 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The use of spiritual healing methods by parents to heal their children presents a hard free exercise case, and this chapter examines several of these key cases from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Criminalization of Christian Science parents whose children have died in spite of their healing efforts is not appropriate if the parents do not have the paradigmatic mens rea, characteristic of manslaughter/child abuse cases (especially under the common law standards). Typically, the parents had intended the best for the child by using healing methods that they had proven work in their own lives and in the experience of their church (founded over 125 years ago). On the other hand, limited civil interventions by the state on behalf of children may very well be justified. The parents’ religious values (including their conception of beneficence) and the value of personal autonomy directly clash with the state's conception of beneficence. Where there are directly conflicting goods at stake, casuistry has no clear answers. Yet, with its emphasis on context, use of analogy, and critique of unexamined assumptions, casuistry offers the fairest method of dealing with this most difficult genre of cases.
The Universalist Movement in America, 1770-1880
Authors: Bressler Ann Lee 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This book offers the first cultural history of Universalism and the Universalist idea – the idea that an all-good and all-powerful God saves all souls. Ann Bressler argues that Universalism began as a radical, eschatological, and communally oriented faith, and only later became a “comfortably established” progressive and individualistic one. Although Universalists are usually classed with Unitarians as pioneering Protestant liberals, the author argues that they were in fact quite different from both contemporary and later liberalism in their ideas and goals. Unitarians began by rejecting the Calvinist idea of sin as corporate, universal, and absolute, replacing it with their moral self-cultivation. Universalists, on the other hand, accepted the Calvinist view of absolute corporeal sinfulness but insisted on absolute corporeal salvation. Bressler’s claim is that Universalists, in their defiance of individualistic moralism, were for much of the nineteenth century the only consistent Calvinists in America. She traces the emergence of the Universalists’ “improved” Calvinism and its gradual erosion over the course of the nineteenth century, when the effort to maintain the early synthesis of Calvinist and Enlightenment ideals failed as the Universalists were swept up in the tide of American religious individualism and moralism. By the late nineteenth century they increasingly extolled moral responsibility and self-cultivation.
Universal Redemption and Social Reform
Authors: Bressler Ann Lee 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
By the 1850s, when their denomination faced serious conflicts over its identity and direction, most Universalists tended to regard Hosea Ballou as a grandfatherly figure, a benign symbol of their heritage, and his death in 1851 occasioned a genuine out‐pouring of grief among his spiritual heirs, who respected him as a great religious reformer. However, for a growing number of adherents, the doctrine of universal salvation was becoming less the crucial core of a saving faith, as it had been for Ballou, than a call to orderly moral reform in the light of the brotherhood and perfectibility of humanity. This shift, in many respects a natural consequence of restorationist belief, manifested itself not only in theology but also in the participation of Universalists in various programs of social reform and in the expanding roles of women within the church. There was, nevertheless, no inherent or inevitable connection between Universalism and reform activity. Indeed, a survey of their involvement in social organizations and movements beyond their church shows that nineteenth-century Universalists shared few, if any, common assumptions about the social imperatives of their faith.
Universalism and Spiritual Science
Authors: Bressler Ann Lee 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
A major part of Universalism’s appeal through the first half of the nineteenth century was its proponents’ reputation for contentiousness. The movement had always attracted more than its share of self-taught religious critics, and this was never more the case than during the Second Great Awakening, when the opportunities for denouncing irrationality and superstition seemed endless. However, as the revivals subsided, the targets for popular rationalism became less obvious, and Universalist energies were forced to seek new outlets. Without their traditional enemies, many Universalists began to waver in their sense of direction, and the denomination became subject to powerful centrifugal tendencies. Among the major new preoccupations of Universalists in this period were the popular “spiritual sciences” of phrenology, mesmerism, and spiritualism, and the heirs of John Murray and Hosea Ballou proved remarkably receptive to these and related teachings, which flowered in the period from the 1830s to the 1870s.
A Republic of Righteousness
Authors: Sassi Jonathan D. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This book analyzes the debate over the proper connection between religion and society that took place in southern New England during the fifty years after the American Revolution. It finds that a Christian social ideology, descended from the region's Puritan origins, endured and evolved during the era of the early republic, in contrast to interpretations that emphasize the individualization and secularization of American public life during the period. In the last two decades of the eighteenth century, the Congregational clergy articulated a corporate ethic that emphasized the superintendence of divine Providence over communal affairs and the importance of social morality for the survival of the new nation, although Baptists and other religious minorities dissented and called for the disestablishment of Congregationalism. By the early nineteenth century, the first party competition between Federalists and Democratic‐Republicans politicized and transformed the debate over public Christianity. Congregationalists became disillusioned with their prophecies of America's millennial role and soured on their partnership with the Federalist magistracy, while dissenters joined Jeffersonians in agitating for disestablishment. At the same time, however, the Congregationalists found cause for optimism amid the revivals of the Second Great Awakening. The experience of Worcester County, Massachusetts was typical, where religious revivals and clerical networking at the grassroots fostered a new vision of the godly community. In the years after 1815 partisan acrimony declined, and the Congregationalists split into Unitarian and orthodox camps. As a result, an evangelical coalition of orthodox Congregationalists, Baptists, and others emerged that charted the way for renewed activism on the part of a Christian electorate and mobilized church. The transformed public Christianity of the 1820s and 1830s made a seminal contribution to the emergence of a variety of reform movements, such as temperance, Sabbatarianism, and antislavery.
Public Christianity's Renewal and Realignment 1815–1833
Authors: Sassi Jonathan D. 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
After 1815 the intense partisanship of the preceding twenty years largely abated and an Era of Good Feelings dawned. This more placid environment fostered a recrudescence of patriotism among Congregational clergymen, who reimagined an important role for the United States in the providential renovation of the world. The disappearance of a common political foe also meant that Unitarian and orthodox Congregationalists were now free to go their separate ways ideologically. The Unitarians retained a hierarchical outlook and defended the traditional Massachusetts establishment until its end in 1833, while the orthodox relied on Christian voters and the revived and mobilized church to promote societal godliness. The new disestablishment position of the orthodox Congregationalists created a convergence of interests with such old dissenting groups as the Baptists and Episcopalians, which led to the coalescence of an evangelical coalition that increasingly predominated in regional and even national culture by the late 1820s.
The Making of Sikh Scripture
Authors: Mann Gurinder Singh 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
At present numbering twenty million adherents and spread the world over, the Sikhs represent a monotheistic tradition founded by Guru Nanak (1469–1539) in the Punjab, a region that served as a cultural bridge between the Middle East and South Asia. The Sikhs are fortunate to have in their possession a large number of early sacred manuscripts, including sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐century protoscriptural texts. This unique context makes it possible for scholars to trace the history of Sikh canon formation with a degree of accuracy unimaginable in other major religious traditions. On the basis of a close examination of the extant manuscripts and other early Sikh sources in private custody of families in the Punjab, the author presents a detailed reconstruction of the making of the Adi Granth (“original book”) – the primary Sikh scripture, which comprises about 3,000 hymns. In the process, he traces its origin, expansion, canonization, and place within the institutional development of the Sikh community. His findings on many key issues differ from the traditional Sikh position, as well as from the hypotheses of other twentieth‐century scholars; they also raise some entirely fresh questions. The revised and expanded picture of the history of the text and institution of Sikh scripture will be of interest not only to scholars of Sikhism and Sikh religionists, but to scholars of comparative canon formation.
The Beginning of the Scriptural Tradition
Authors: Singh Mann Gurinder 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This chapter and the next two examine in detail the extant Sikh scriptural manuscripts in relation to the compilation of the Adi Granth (the primary Sikh scripture). Here, an analysis is made of the information available about the Guru Harsahai Pothi (thought to date from the 1530s) and the Goindval Pothis (thought to date from the 1570s), which are traditionally associated with Guru Nanak and Guru Amardas, respectively. The contents of these manuscripts are drawn on to assess the early formation of the Sikh scriptural corpus, and questions of their history, dating, and location in the early Sikh sacred corpus addressed.
The Emerging Structure of the Adi Granth
Authors: Singh Mann Gurinder 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The evolutionary process that resulted in the Adi Granth is traced. First, the significance of rag in Sikh devotion and its relationship to the organization of Sikh scripture are briefly addressed. The evolution is the traced of the structure of the Sikh text in terms of both the sequential arrangement of rag sections and their internal constitution. The chapter concludes with a brief comparison of the structure of the Adi Granth with that of Hindu and Islamic scriptures.
Love's Grateful Striving
Authors: Ferreira M. Jamie 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThis commentary on Søren Kierkegaard's Works of Love (1847), a series of 15 deliberations on the love commandment (to love one's neighbor as oneself), argues that Works of Love provides resources for understanding our ethical responsibility for others in ways that respect concrete distinctiveness and equality, partiality and impartiality, as well as the relation between self‐esteem, human needs, and self‐denial. This reading of Kierkegaard's Christian love ethic – an ethic of agape – relates to contemporary discussions of love as infinite debt and radical gift; it presents the ethical relation as one of moral vision and moral blindness, in order to respect alterity and kinship; it also clarifies Kierkegaard's relation to his Lutheran heritage, highlighting both love's hiddenness and its works (fruits). Moreover, the deliberations on building up others, on forgiveness, and on reconciliation, address dimensions of our responsibility for community.
Love's Law—Equality
Authors: Ferreira M. Jamie 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe sharp distinction between preferential love (erotic love and friendship) and love of one's neighbor (agape) is mitigated by the claim that neighbor‐love should be preserved in erotic love and friendship. Neighbor‐love is a commitment to equality, which involves a kind of moral blindness, and is best understood, in comparison with the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, as responsibility to others.
Love's Vision
Authors: Ferreira M. Jamie 
Published: October 2003

AbstractAlthough it ignores concrete differences used as the basis for excluding anyone from our realm of responsibility, love involves moral vision – attention to concrete difference is necessary to determine the distinctive kind of response needed. Love is a kind of “seeing” – we must love people honestly, as they are, and not as we would like them to be. Our impartiality must be interested rather than disinterested, but acceptance of the other can be coupled with challenge to the other; the abstract skeleton of the commandment needs to be fleshed out by the demand for attention to concrete differences in a context of realism that sorrowfully acknowledges tragedy.
Love's Debt
Authors: Ferreira M. Jamie 
Published: October 2003

AbstractGod's love for us – a radical gift – entails that we have an “infinite debt” of love to others. This notion excludes the idea of love as repayment; it is, moreover, a fulfillable duty, because Christ fulfilled it and because we are called to imitate Christ. It is feasible as long as we distinguish between the completion of our duty (which we cannot achieve) and the loving performance of it at a given moment (which we can achieve). Although the command generates “offense,” the “as yourself” reinstates limits on self‐sacrifice; justice is one such limit.
Love's Gift
Authors: Ferreira M. Jamie 
Published: October 2003

AbstractLove is a gift to others, as well as a debt to them. Love is giving, rather than an exchange, and it is a giving that hides itself in sensitivity to the other's feelings. Love helps the other to stand by him/herself. Self‐denial is entailed in any attempt to love the other's distinctiveness, to avoid molding or domineering the other. The relevance of the gratitude or ingratitude of the recipient is examined. This analysis is relevant to contemporary discussions of a work “without return” (Levinas) and gift as “the impossible” (Derrida).
Love's Transparency
Authors: Ferreira M. Jamie 
Published: October 2003

AbstractTransparency equals love of truth – the whole truth about self‐denial is that one can do nothing (without God) and that one can do everything (with God). The purpose of self‐denial is to reconcile people in the community; it is not an end in itself. The Christian notion of “hatred of the world” is contrasted with that of the world's approval, and explored in terms of persecution and worldly opposition.