Religious freedom is recognized as an essential human right. Yet claims of religious liberty are also used to justify discrimination against women, lgbtq+ individuals, religious minorities, and others. We sometimes see interfaith alliances collaborating to undermine civil rights protections. High-profile disputes over insurance coverage of contraceptives and abortion raise questions about the individuals' liberties, often sacrificed to the claims of religious institutions or even private companies.
Lawmakers wield "religious liberty" to impose their own religious beliefs, both explicitly and unacknowledged, restricting the lives and freedoms of others. We have also witnessed concerns about religious bigotry being used as a shield against criticism and a challenge to freedom of speech and assembly. How do we guard individual liberties and group practices while resisting the increasing weaponization of religious freedom?
We will explore topics that address these with a particular focus on the impact on our multifaith context and encounters across religious difference.
This paper examines the contested categorization of Mexican spiritual practices, particularly in relation to the term Brujería, within both academic discourse and lived experience. By analyzing the historical, epistemological, and social forces that shape these classifications, this study explores the ways in which Western religious frameworks classify these traditions as “folk religion" rather than an entire religious system in and of itself. Drawing from decolonial theory and Religious Rtudies, the paper interrogates how Brujería has been both a stigmatizing label and a reclaimed identity, reflecting broader tensions in religious hybridity and cultural identity. This study highlights how these traditions embody a syncretic spirituality that defies rigid religious binaries. By situating these practices within the broader shifts in religious affiliation, identity, and interfaith engagement, this paper challenges the necessity of categorization itself and calls for a more nuanced, decolonial approach to understanding Mexican spiritualities.
At a rally in Ferguson, Missouri six months after the killing of Michael Brown, a seminarian took the bullhorn. Offering a twist on the then-popular chant, “Show me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like!” she called out: “Show me what theology looks like.” And the crowd responded, “This is what theology looks like!”
This paper looks at the ways in which the public-facing work of one broad-based, interfaith community organizing project in Philadelphia, POWER Interfaith, functions to not only “show us what theology looks like,” but suggests two things. First, that race-centered, interfaith organizing can be seen not only as a religious practice, but as a form of public theology. Second, in a departure from traditional faith-based organizing practice, being differently-religious together in urban space is not just a means to the end of winning organizing campaigns, but can also be an end in itself.
In 1967, Saul Colbi wrote that “the mere existence and operation of a Ministry of Religious Affairs [in Israel] underlies the importance which the state attaches to the spiritual aspect of the life in the land that is called Holy.” While non-Jewish religious communities had to adapt to this new framework of governance, the ‘Missionary Question’—whether Christians could continue proselytization efforts in the Jewish State—became a central concern.
Using the controversy surrounding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ (LDS) establishment of a campus in Jerusalem in the 1980s as a case study, this paper explores Israeli efforts to legislate against Christian missionary activities. It will focus on the legal, religious, and political justifications used to enforce such restrictions, and examine how the concept of ‘religious liberty’ can be mobilized as a political tool of governance to both protect religious identity and limit individual freedoms.