Religious Freedom and the Modern Nation State

Catalog description

Especially in the last couple of decades, political theorists, historians, and scholars of religion and law have emphasized that conceptions of religious freedom are inextricably bound to the structures of the modern state. This course explores the contours of this binding by way of a comparative study of legal cases concerning religious freedom in Israel, India, and the United States. Particular attention will be given to debates about conversion, whether freedom of religion includes the right to preserve one's religion in the face of competing rights, the relation between religious freedom and human rights discourse from the writing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and human rights discourse until today, as well as the relation between religion and nationalism in the these debates.