Law Commons^™

Faithful Hermeneutics, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

This article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools on January 9, 2009 as part of a panel on "Scriptural and Constitutional Hermeneutics." The panel was co-sponsored by the Law and Religion Section, Section on Jewish Law, and Section on Islamic Law, and the papers will be published by the Michigan State Law Review.

My article compares legal and religious hermeneutics by exploring the dual nature of what I term "faithful hermeneutics." The ambiguity evoked by this phrase is intentional. On one hand, it suggests an investigation of the relationship between legal and religious …

Faith And Politics In The Post-Secular Age: The Promise Of President Obama, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

If the modern era is properly characterized as the 'age of secularism' - a time when constitutional democracies finally have shed the last vestiges of church authority from the political realm and embrace a rationalist and humanist perspective - then the United States appears to be outside the Western mainstream. In this paper I explore how the relationship between politics and religious faith in the United States might be seen as part of the narrative of secularism that defines most other Western countries, even as the differences in the American experience might suggest an evolution of this narrative. My thesis …

The Political Origins Of Secular Public Education: The New York School Controversy 1840-1842, Ian C. Bartrum

Scholarly Works

As the title suggests, this article explores the historical origins of secular public education, with a particular focus on the controversy surrounding the Catholic petitions for school funding in nineteenth-century New York City. The article first examines the development of Protestant nonsectarian common schools in the northeast, then turns to the New York controversy in detail, and finally explores that controversy's legacy in state constitutions and the Supreme Court. It is particularly concerned with two ideas generated in New York: (1) Bishop John Hughes' objection to nonsectarianism as the 'sectarianism of infidelity'; and (2) New York Secretary of State John …