Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2020
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01801
Abstract
The ideas sketched here concern the nonestablishment and free exercise norms expressed in the U.S. Constitution, their application to governmental institutions from legislatures to prisons and the military, the place of religion in the curricula of public schools, and the proper role of religious convictions in lawmaking. A major concern of the essay is the problem of achieving an appropriate balance between governmental neutrality toward religion, as required by the nonestablishment norm, and governmental accommodation of religious practices that would otherwise violate ordinary laws, as required by the free exercise norm. A recurring theme is the complexity of the issues and the variability of possible solutions given differences in the history and culture of democratic societies.
Disciplines
Law | Law and Philosophy | Religion | Religion Law | Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Kent Greenawalt,
Democracy & Religion: Some Variations & Hard Questions,
149(3)
Daedalus
25
(2020).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2873
Included in
Law and Philosophy Commons, Religion Law Commons, Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons