Digital Commons Network^™

Virtual Confessions: Examining The Clergy Privilege’S Extension To Artificially Intelligent Religious Robots, Samuel N. Dick

The University of Cincinnati Intellectual Property and Computer Law Journal

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fundamentally changing the world. AI’s rapid development is driving its integration into every industry, including those traditionally untouched by technology—such as religion. Today, faith groups in America and globally, are integrating AI-driven robots in roles traditionally held by human priests, clergy, or pastors. AI robots have begun giving sermons, conducting funerals/weddings, providing spiritual counseling, and conducting the sacrament of confession. Some faith groups have gone further claiming the worship of AI as an independent religion, and have received § 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status as a church. Whether thoughts of sacrileges, inevitability, or a science-fiction novel emerge, AI’s …

The Fall And Rise Of Bengali Muslim Conciousness: Conceptualising The Identity Of The Bangla Universal, Habib Khan

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of modern-nation states saw the end of the empirical era of exploitation and exercise of inherent racist tendencies towards the 'other'. However, the effect of that colonial system is still ever-present in the creation and governance of these newly independent states. While every new state aims to be 'modern', they adopt the international legal framework of the West as their own - a system they had initially wanted to escape. The concept of Muslim universality in the form of the ummah should have freed Pakistan from the shackles of its former colonial masters. Instead, this phenomenon was replaced …

Soul Quest Church Of Mother Earth: Ayahuasca Decriminalization And The Struggle Of An Institution To Become A Church, Tarryl Janik

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the process by which Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth Inc., an ayahuasca church, in Orlando, Florida, seeks to become a legal church in order to be exempted from the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 which classifies DMT, the psychedelic by-product of the boiled ayahuasca vine and chacruna leaf, as an illicit substance. The three-year study charts the process by which Soul Quest undertakes to demonstrate their practice and belief in terms that will conform to the State’s idea of what “church-ness” looks like and how sincere belief should be demonstrated in terms the law will find …

Under G-D, Dereck Daschke

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Under G-d (2022), directed by Paula Eiselt.

Modeling Church And State:The Ideological Use Of History In Establishmentclause Jurisprudence, Charles Kelbley

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mai Bhago And Amrita Devi Bishnoi: Women Of Strength, Sowmya Ayyar

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Mai Bhago (1670-1720), also known as Bhag Kaur, distinguished herself on the battlefield to defend the Sikh faith. Amrita Devi Bishnoi (d. 1730) is said to have sacrificed her life with 362 others to protect the Khejari trees in the Rajasthan desert. Both women continue to inspire social justice and ecological activism.

The Politics Of The Self: Psychedelic Assemblages, Psilocybin, And Subjectivity In The Anthropocene, Joshua Falcon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how psychedelic substances become drawn into particular sociohistorical and political arrangements, and how psychedelic experiences with psilocybin ‘magic mushrooms’ are used as tools of subjectivation. Guided by literatures in philosophy, critical theory, and the social sciences that focus on subjectivity, assemblage theory, and critical posthumanism, I argue that psychedelics are drawn into variegated assemblages, each of which conceptualizes the nature of psychedelics in highly specific ways that reflect implicit conceptions of the world and the self. In developing the concept of psychedelic assemblages, this research provides a window onto the politics of the self in the Anthropocene. …

Christian Accounts Of Religious Liberty: Two Views Of Conscience, Joel Harrison

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

State Secrecy: A Literature Review, Stephane Lefebvre

Secrecy and Society

What is secrecy? What is a state secret? Which state secrets deserve protection from disclosures? How are state secrets protected from disclosure? In this review, I use these questions as an organizing framework to review the richness of a very disparate, largely US-centric, but also multidisciplinary literature. In doing so, I highlight the social nature of secrecy - that it is a social construct with social effects and consequences - and the need for further research to unveil those rationalities that specific discourses on state secrecy put forward to legitimize the nondisclosure of state secrets.

Ministerial Exception: The Involuntary Servitude Loophole, Juliana Moraes Liu

First Amendment Law Review

No abstract provided.

Faith In Strasbourg And Luxembourg? The Fresh Rise Of Religious Freedom Litigation In The Pan-European Courts, John Witte Jr., Andrea Pin

Emory Law Journal

The religious landscape of Europe has changed dramatically in the past two generations. Traditional Christian establishments have been challenged by the growth of religious pluralism and strong new movements of laïcité and secularism. Once powerful religious cultures have been shattered by exposures of clerical abuses and financial self-dealing, leading to emptier pews and waning political influence. Once quiet, homogenous European communities are now home to large groups of new Muslim emigrants, making new demands and sparking strong anti-immigrant movements. Once strictly controlled national borders have opened across Eastern and Western Europe, leading to massive migration and tense local intermixtures of …

State Regulation Of Religion: The Effect Of Religious Freedom On Muslims' Religiosity, Hannah M. Ridge

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

Substantial scholarship argues that regulation of religion suppresses religiosity in a community by reducing individuals’ satisfaction with their religious experience. To date this research has assumed that regulations are enforced on and affect religious communities uniformly. It has also focused heavily on Western Christian populations and aggregated national data. We suggest that state regulation of religious communities and behaviours impacts citizens differently based on their affiliation. Using individual-level assessments of freedom and religiosity from Muslim-majority countries, we show that, at the individual level, restricting freedom suppresses religious belief and behaviour. Restrictions on religious minorities, however, can increase religiosity. As such, …

After Espinoza: What's Left Of The Establishment Clause?, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

Consistent with the Establishment Clause, the Supreme Court had permitted the government to fund public and private K-12 schools, so long as any direct aid was not diverted to an explicitly religious purpose. In Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Rev., the Court held that when there is a government program with a secular purpose, such as education, the Free Exercise Clause requires that the program be available without regard to religion. Clearly the Religion Clauses have undergone a major transformation since the days of no parochial school aid whatsoever in the 1970s and 80s. So, it bears asking: What …

Film Tourism Impacts: A Multi-Stakeholder Longitudinal Approach, Timo Thelen, Sangkyun Kim, Elisabeth Scherer

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This study examines multiple local stakeholders’ perceptions of film tourism impacts to shed light on the complexities of film tourism planning and development, using a longitudinal exploratory research approach. The Japanese TV series Mare (2015) was chosen as the case study. Qualitative interviews with various local stakeholders were conducted over a 21-month-long period of a film tourism development project in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. The study found that this film tourism project was initiated with high expectations. However, due to several incidents, such as the controversial rebuilding of a local highway road for promotional purposes, the audience’s mixed reception of the …

Fourth- And Fifth-Generation Warfare: Technology And Perceptions, Waseem Ahmad Qureshi

San Diego International Law Journal

The composition of warfare is changing. There is an increasing transformation in the traditional aspects of waging a war: conventional techniques of warfare are in decline and newer tactics and tools of warfare, such as information warfare, asymmetric warfare, media propaganda, and hybrid warfare, are filling the gap, blurring the lines between combatant and noncombatant, and between wartime and peacetime. The basic framework of modern warfare was elaborated by Carl von Clausewitz in his magnus opus On War. He defined modern warfare between states as “a duel on larger scale,” and explained its purpose as “a continuation of politics by …

Interview Of Margaret Mcguinness, Ph.D., Margaret Mcguinness Ph.D., Stephen Pierce

All Oral Histories

Dr. Margaret McGuinness was born in 1953, in Providence, Rhode Island. She went to an all-girls Catholic high school called St. Mary’s Academy Bayview in Providence where she graduated in 1971. McGuinness went on to major in American Studies and Civilization as an undergraduate at Boston University graduating with a B.A in 1975. She continued her work at Boston University where McGuinness earned a master’s of theological studies (M.T.S) focusing on Biblical and Historical Studies in 1979. She would move to New York to work on her dissertation at Union Theological Seminary finishing with her Ph.D. in 1985 concentrating on …

Volume 8: Gender, Governance And Islam, Deniz Kandiyoti, Nadje Al-Ali, Kathryn Spellman Poots

Exploring Muslim Contexts

Analyses the links between gender and governance in contemporary Muslim majority countries and diaspora contexts.

Following a period of rapid political change, both globally and in relation to the Middle East and South Asia, this collection sets new terms of reference for an analysis of the intersections between global, state, non-state and popular actors and their contradictory effects on the politics of gender.

The volume charts the shifts in academic discourse and global development practice that shape our understanding of gender both as an object of policy and as a terrain for activism. Nine individual case studies systematically explore how …

Litigation, Liberty, And Legitimation: The Experience Of The Church Of Scientology In Australian Law, Bernard Doherty, James T. Richardson

Law Papers and Journal Articles

Freedom of religion, the paradigm of freedom of conscience, is of the essence of a free society. The chief function in the law of a definition of religion is to mark out an area within which a person subject to the law is free to believe and to act in accordance with his belief without legal restraint.

Cold Genocide: Falun Gong In China, Maria Cheung, Torsten Trey, David Matas, Richard An

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The article explores patterns of a cold genocide in the eradication campaign against Falun Gong. Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that has been targeted for eradication by the Chinese regime since 1999. In comparison to the documented cases of genocide, the genocide of Falun Gong stands out as anomalous because it is virtually ignored. The article seeks to elucidate the multi-faceted nature of this concealed genocide from an interdisciplinary perspective encompassing social work, medicine and law, In particular, the article demonstrates that the eradication campaign against Falun Gong is distinguishable as a cold genocide as it is: (1) multi-dimensional …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Not Today, Satan: Re-Examining Viewpoint Discrimination In The Limited Public Forum, Daniel Cutler

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

A King Who Devours His People: Jiang Zemin And The Falun Gong Crackddown: A Bibliography, Michael J. Greenlee

Michael Greenlee

In July 1999, the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began an official crackdown against the qigong cultivation group known as Falun Gong. Intended to quickly contain and eliminate what the PRC considers an evil or heretical cult (xiejiao), the suppression has instead created the longest sustained and, since the Tiananmen Square protests of June 1989, most widely known human rights protest conducted in the PRC. The Falun Gong has received worldwide recognition and support while the crackdown continues to provoke harsh criticism against the PRC as new allegations of human rights …

State-Supported Display Of Religious Symbols In The Public Space, Silvio Ferrari

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

Modem Day Slavery: A Socio-Legal Analysis Of Slavery-Like Offences In Charismatic Cults, Hava Dayan

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

The “Ample Alternative Channels” Flaw In First Amendment Doctrine, Enrique Armijo

Washington and Lee Law Review

In reviewing a content-neutral regulation affecting speech, courts ask if the regulation leaves open “ample alternative channels of communication” for the restricted speaker’s expression. Substitutability is the underlying rationale. If the message could have been expressed in some other legal way, the ample alternative channels requirement is met. The court then deems the restriction’s harm to the speaker’s expressive right as de minimis and upholds the law. For decades, courts and free speech scholars have assumed the validity of this principle. It has set First Amendment jurisprudence on the wrong course. Permitting a speech restriction because the speaker could have …

Religion In The United States Tax Code: Defining Religion In The Age Of The Internet, Michael Degnan

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Money And Power In Religious Competition: A Critique Of The Religious Free Market, Jianlin Chen

Jianlin Chen

Academics have frequently alluded to the normative value of the religious free market fostered by the twin legal guarantees of the free exercise of religion and the absence of state establishment of religion. This article challenges the idealized portrayal of a religion’s ‘flourish[ing] according to the zeal of its adherents and the appeal of its dogma’ and examines the dynamics of material wealth and political power in a religion’s success. This article suggests that controversial measures such as affirmative action for socio-economically disadvantaged religions and restrictions of religious involvement in politics are not necessarily incompatible with the religious free market.

Freedom Of Religion In China Under The Current Legal Framework And Foreign Religious Bodies, Ping Xiong

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Emergent Public Discourse And The Constitutional Debate In Tunisia: A Critical Narrative Analysis, Nathaniel Greenberg

Nathaniel Greenberg

The appointment of the Minister of Industry, the so-called “technocrat” Mehdi Jomaa, to form a caretaker government in Tunisia on the eve of the revolution’s third anniversary, threw into stark relief the country’s complex struggle for democracy following the January 14 revolution. The announcement came in the wake of the Islamist party Ennahdha’s sudden renunciation of the Prime Minister’s office in September, ostensibly a sign of cooperation in the face of mounting criticism surrounding the government’s failure to investigate the assassinations of two political opposition figures. A number of Western media outlets, including the New York Times, quickly absorbed the …

Demanding The Angels’ Share: Intellectual Property And Spiritual Organization In The Urantia Foundation, Andrew Ventimiglia

Studio for Law and Culture

This article explores the role that intellectual property plays as it shapes the circulation and use of ‘The Urantia Book,’ a divinely revealed text published in 1955 and embraced by a community of believers. For many modern spiritual communities – of which the Urantian community is a telling example – their coherence no longer lies in a centralized institution like the church but instead in a shared dedication to sacred texts and other religious media. Thus, intellectual property has become an effective means to administer the ephemeral beliefs and practices mediated by these texts. This article explores a number of …