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"religious freedom"
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Misconceptions of Religious Freedom: Toward an Empirical Study of Religious Freedom Awareness
This article offers an overview of the most common misconceptions about religious freedom, with reference to the 2017 UN Report by Mr. Shaheed and the perspectives of other human rights scholars and experts. It proceeds with the operationalization of a selected list of misconceptions about this subject for empirical research of religious freedom awareness. We discuss the primary results from a survey on social perceptions of religious freedom collected from a convenience sample of university students in Northern Italy (N = 1035), offering, first, a new scale of religious freedom awareness (RFA), and second, a consideration of its association with various dimensions of religious freedom and other human rights. The findings show that awareness of religious freedom serves as a robust predictor of endorsement of a broader set of human rights by participants, including those potentially antithetical to religious freedom claims, such as gay and women’s rights. We discuss these findings against a holistic approach to human rights and empirical evidence that other variables (political engagement, passive secularism views, and spiritual identity) contribute to the endorsement of rights culture in Italian society.
Journal Article
Institutional Religious Freedom in Full: What the Liberty of Religious Organizations Really Is and Why It Is an “Essential Service” to the Common Good
Should the freedom of churches and other religious institutions come down to little more than a grudging recognition that “what happens in the church, stays in the church”? In this article, I provide a more robust definition of what I call institutional religious freedom than a crabbed and merely negative understanding. In addition, I also go beyond a libertarian-style defense of institutional religious freedom as the ecclesiastical equivalent of the “right to be left alone” by suggesting a multitude of reasons why institutional religious freedom in a robust form deserves robust protection. Especially amidst exigent challenges such as the global COVID-19 pandemic, an anemic appeal to an ecclesiastical version of negative liberty on merely jurisdictional grounds will not be enough to defend religious organizations from an increasingly strong temptation and tendency on the part of political authorities—often acting on the basis of understandable intentions—to subject such organizations to sweeping interference even in the most internal matters. In contrast, the article offers an articulation of why both the internal and external freedoms of religious institutions require maximum deference if they are to offer their indispensable contributions—indeed, their “essential services”—to the shared public good in the United States and other countries throughout the world. Underscoring the external and public dimensions of institutional religious freedom, the article follows the work of law and religion scholar W. Cole Durham in that it analytically disaggregates the freedom of religious institutions into three indispensable components: “substantive”, or the right of self-definition; “vertical”, or the right of self-governance; and “horizontal”, or the right of self-directed outward expression and action.
Journal Article
Tracking Religious Freedom Violations with the Violent Incidents Database: A Methodological Approach and Comparative Analysis
Measuring and comparing religious freedom across countries and over time requires reliable and valid data sources. Existing religious freedom datasets are either based on the coding of qualitative data (such as the Religion and State Project or the Pew Research Center), on expert opinions (V-Dem or the World Watch List) or on surveys (Anti-Defamation League). Each of these approaches has its strengths and limitations. In this study, we present the Violent Incidents Database (VID), a complementary tool designed to collect, record, and analyze violent incidents related to violations of religious freedom based on media reports and other public sources. We critically describe the criteria and process for selecting, coding and verifying the incidents, as well as the categories and indicators used to classify them. We also compare the VID with other existing religious freedom datasets and show how the VID provides a complementary picture of the nature and dynamics of religious freedom violations. We offer a preliminary analysis of the data collected through the end of 2024 with selected figures for data visualization. We conclude by discussing anticipated improvements for the VID as well as its potential applications for policy makers, advocates, and practitioners.
Journal Article
Ethical foundations of Jacques Maritain’s and Michael Novak’s conception of human rights
The aim of the contribution is to outline the ethical foundations in Maritain’s and Novak’s interpretation of human rights in a wider historical context and to assess its meaning for the present, with special regard to our Central European area. The issue of human rights has, in addition to its political aspect, an inherent ethical one. Fundamental human rights relate to the possibility of autonomy of a person as a moral being endowed with reason and striving for a meaningful life. Therefore, these rights have a fundamental role in practical life; however, they have also become an issue of speculative philosophy and theology, where the focus is upon concepts of freedom and reason. Jacques Maritain and Michael Novak were important figures in the advancement of human rights at the international level, with exceptional impacts especially in Central Europe. Both have their roots in Christian humanism, and for both their concept of human relations is derived from Biblical religion and love for one’s neighbour. Novak accepts Maritain’s concepts of a person and human dignity, and he tries to explain his own concept of democratic capitalism in accordance with it.
Journal Article