Acknowledgments
Introduction
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Saba Mahmood, and Peter G. Danchin
PART 1. Religion
Preface Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Chapter 1. Imagining the Hebrew Republic: Christian Genealogies of Religious Freedom
Robert Yelle
Chapter 2. On the Freedom of the Concepts of Religion and Belief
Yvonne Sherwood
Chapter 3. Believing in Religious Freedom
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Chapter 4. What Is Religious Freedom Supposed to Free?
Webb Keane
Chapter 5. The Power of Pluralist Thinking
Courtney Bender
Chapter 6. Refl ections on the Politics of Religious Freedom, with Attention to Hawaii
Greg Johnson
Chapter 7. Traditional, African, Religious, Freedom?
Rosalind I. J. Hackett
PART 2. History
Preface Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Chapter 8. The Problem with the History of Toleration
Evan Haefeli
Chapter 9. Religious Minorities and Citizenship in the Long Nineteenth Century: Some Contexts of Jewish Emancipation
David Sorkin
Chapter 10. Varieties of Religious Freedom and Governance: A Practical Perspective
Robert W. Hefner
Chapter 11. Religious Freedom between Truth and Tactic
Samuel Moyn
Chapter 12. Religious Freedom, Minority Rights, and Geopolitics
Saba Mahmood
Chapter 13. Ceylon/Sri Lanka: The Politics of Religious Freedom and the End of Empire
Benjamin Schonthal
Chapter 14. Liberty as Recognition
Nandini Chatterjee
PART 3. Law and Politics
Preface Peter G. Danchin
Chapter 15. Postapartheid Treatment of Religious Freedom in South Africa
Waheeda Amien
Chapter 16. Religious Freedom in Postrevolutionary Tunisia
Nadia Marzouki
Chapter 17. Beyond Establishment
Lori G. Beaman
Chapter 18. The Bishops, the Sisters, and Religious Freedom
Elizabeth A. Castelli
Chapter 19. The World That Smith Made
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Chapter 20. Religious Freedom in the Panopticon of Enlightenment Rationality
Peter G. Danchin
Chapter 21. Everson’s Children
Ann Pellegrini
PART 4. Freedom
Preface Saba Mahmood
Chapter 22. Protecting Freedom of Religion in the Secular Age
Cécile Laborde
Chapter 23. Freeing Religion at the Birth of South Sudan
Noah Salomon
Chapter 24. Is Religion Free?
Michael Lambek
Chapter 25. Religious Freedom and the Bind of Suspicion in Contemporary Secularity
Hussein Ali Agrama
Chapter 26. Religious Repression and Religious Freedom: An Analysis of Their Contradictions in (Post- )Soviet Contexts
Mathijs Pelkmans
Chapter 27. Religious Freedom’s Oxymoronic Edge
Wendy Brown
Contributors
Index
Talal Asad, Graduate Center, City University of New York
"The principle of religious freedom, central to the liberal politics of the modern world, is increasingly becoming an object of critical reflection. This collection, edited by four distinguished scholars, is a welcome contribution to this important topic. I have learnt something from each of these thoughtful essays. Everyone interested in recent debates on secularism will benefit from reading them."
Robert Orsi, Northwestern University
"This extraordinary volume brings together the leading scholars of the idea and practice of 'religious freedom' today, in conversation with each other and with their critics. Beyond any simple for/against dichotomy, the contributors show how the admirable resonance of 'religious freedom' masks a more troubling reality, both at the historical origins of the concept and in its contemporary strategic deployments. Among the book’s many contributions is its sustained and careful examination of the mutual entanglement of 'religion,' in its modern semantic range, and law, and the implication of both in national and global politics, from early modernity forward. The Politics of Religious Freedom is a definitive collection of the best critical work on the subject."
Choice
“The contributors repeatedly make the point [that], rather than a single, stable principle of universal application, religious freedom is polyvalent and reflects the historical conditions of its composition. . . . Highly recommended.”
Jessica L. Radin, University of Toronto | Middle East Law and Governance
“A book which is deeply satisfying both for quality of writing and for quality of scholarship, one which I look forward to using extensively in my work and in the construction of syllabi."
Daniel Liechty, Illinois State University | Religion
"Taken individually, these essays are erudite, consistently interesting, and well written. Taken collectively, they are a tour de force for deepening our knowledge and understanding of a concept many or most of us have simply taken for granted in our intellectual lives.”
Religious Studies Review
"Hurd argues that the pursuit of freedom of religion as a policy goal has worked to produce, reaffirm, and/or reify various forms of difference, both between Euro-American nations and the recipients of their cultural imperialism, and between legally specified religious (and non-religious) 'communities' throughout the world. . . . this edited volume brings together anthropologists, historians, lawyers, political scientists, and scholars of religion to discuss (and 'unsettle') the assumption 'that religious freedom is easily recognized and understood, and that the only problem lies in its incomplete realization'. The collection is divided into four parts, each of which is prefaced by one of the four editors . . . These introductions usefully contextualize the thematic links between the essays in each section, each of which contains an example of the 'crazy quilt of local solutions' by which conflicts over religion are managed."
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