PART 4: Religion, Public Policy, and Pluralism

General questions: Why is public policy such a hotbed for controversy over the role of religion and public life?  What do concepts like "values," "pluralism," "neutrality," and government "coercion" have to do with it?

I. Foreign Policy and Israel

  • What's at stake in U.S. foreign policy regarding Israel (financial aid and political support, for example)?
  • What are some reasons for U.S. support of Israel other than religion?
  • How does the history of worldwide Judaism combine with Jewish beliefs to justify Jewish settlement of Palestine?
  • What is Zionism?  How does the history of Zionism help explain the birth of the Israeli state?
  • Did the British, the United Nations, the United States, and other foreign or international groups place obstacles or reinforce Jewish claims on Palestinian areas (e.g. Balfour Declaration, UN Resolution)?
  • What role do secular Jews in the United State play in continuing U.S. support for Israel?
  • What beliefs drive many evangelicals to support a Jewish state in Palestine? How have Catholics and mainliners articulated their understanding of Israel's place in the Middle East?
  • What role might realism or idealism play in the discussion of religion and foreign policy?  Consider this question in light of our comparison of foreign policy in Israel and the Sudan.

 

II.  Public morality / private choices

  • What do we mean by morality policy, and what role does religion play in it?
  • Why is morality policy only controversial in a heterogeneous society?
  • What is unique about political conflict associated with morality policy?  For example, what does it mean to talk about policy that is a "clash of absolutes" or a zero-sum game?  How relevant are morality policy issues to the public compared to other policy areas?
  • How do the abortion and right-to-die issues draw out the tension between values like state paternalism, autonomy, religious values, and so on? 

 

III.  Church-state partnerships and faith-based social services

  • How did the charitable choice provisions of welfare reform in 1996 attempt to address the religious freedom of both faith-based social services and individual clients?
  • Why did hiring discrimination based on religion, which has always been allowed for the hiring of clergy in religious institutions, become a key problem in proposals for state funding of faith-based social services?

 

PART 5: Church and State

 

General questions:

  • Why did I argue in class that the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the Constitution are the "flip side" of each other?
  • What are the most basic and non-controversial protections provided by the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses?

 

I. Free Exercise

  • What are some of the state interests or goals that the Supreme Court is most likely to uphold against free exercise claims?  Is it possible to categorize these interests along certain dimensions (e.g. perceived threats to state authority, challenges to community values or public welfare, etc.)?  See , for e.g., Goldman and the other free exercise cases excerpted in Church and State in American History.
  • What is the belief-action distinction, especially as laid out in the Reynolds case (i.e., the Mormon polygamy case)?
  • The Sherbert-Yoder cases laid out a set of principles that should guide the Court in deciding free exercise claims.   What are these strict scrutiny principles, and how are they distinguished from a secular regulation (aka, "rational basis") test?
  • How does Smith change the way the Court scrutinizes free exercise claims?  How was its argument in Smith applied in the Santeria case?  What did the U.S. Congress do in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to respond to the Smith case, and how did the Court react to RFRA (see lecture notes and Fowler/Hertzke/Olson, Ch. 11)?

 

II. Establishment

  • What's the importance of the Everson case?  What is the child benefit theory laid out in the case?
  • How did the Court distinguish between different public displays of religious symbols in Lynch and Allegheny?
  • What is the Court's basic reasoning when deciding school prayer and Bible reading cases (see, for e.g., Engel v. Vitale, Lee v. Weisman, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe)?  How do concerns with government sponsorship of prayer factor into these decisions?  Does the context of the prayer (e.g., nature of the invitation to pray, the identity of the person who prays, place in which the prayer is delivered) change the Court's reasoning?  Do the Court's decisions regarding the teaching of creation and/or evolution in schools follow a similar reasoning (Epperson, Edwards)?
  • What are the prongs of the Lemon test?  How has it been used in deciding cases related to state aid for religious schools (e.g., paying public school teachers to teach secular subjects in private religious schools, providing instructional materials to religious schools at public expense)?  How was it used in the voucher case, if at all (Zelman v. Simmons-Harris)?
  • What is "equal access"?  How has equal access law broadened over time, both through Court rulings (e.g. Widmar and Rosenberger) and congressional legislation (e.g. Equal Access Act of 1984)?
  • What are the basic differences among advocates of church-state separation, neutrality, and equal treatment (see Fowler, Ch. 10, pp. 207-213)?

 

PART 6: Theories of Religion and Political Culture

  • How does market theory apply the basic distinction between supply and demand to religion in America?
  • Why is disestablishment an important condition of a vibrant "religious market," according to market theorists?  How does competition play a role in religious vibrancy and levels of affiliation?
  • How do comparisons across nations help illumine market theory?  Are there examples of historical or national contexts that seem to pose a problem for the theory?
  • According to secularization theory, why does increasing modernization lead to diminished religious influence?  How is this influence diminished for individuals, organizations, and society as a whole?
  • How would you compare secularization theory to market theory?  Are they opposed positions, or in some way complementary?  And how do both theories bear on the political mobilization and influence of religious groups?
  • What is neosecularization?  How is it distinguished from traditional secularization theory?
  • How do such theories as culture war and culture shift attempt to explain religion in public life?
  • How does Tocqueville help us understand the role of religion in what Fowler et al call liberal culture?