Religion, Law and the Irish State

Religion, Law and the Irish State
Author: Eoin Daly
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Church and state
ISBN: 9781905536498

Religion features prominently in Irish history and politics. Its peculiar legal status represents one of the distinctive features of the Irish constitutional tradition. The 1937 Constitution accords religion a central position as an anchoring point of Ireland's national identity, yet also includes ostensibly strong guarantees of freedom of conscience and religion, and of equality on religious grounds, that are typical of liberal-democratic constitutional systems. It synthesizes competing theories and models, tentatively affirming religion's public status, yet committing it to the private sphere for most purposes. For the most part, the historically close relationship between the State and the Catholic Church found no clear mandate in the constitutional text, which, contrary to prevailing perceptions, imposes a limited form of Church-State separation - although the exact boundaries it imposes remain unclear. More specifically, the legal principles and doctrines relating to religious practice are ambiguous and underdeveloped, particularly in issues surrounding religious freedom and denominational autonomy. The extent to which the Constitution protects religious activity from State interference has never been decisively resolved; additionally, constitutional considerations underlie resurgent contemporary controversies in the field of Church and State - particularly in the recent public debate on the role of religion in schools. Accordingly, Religion, Law and the Irish State examines the constitutional framework governing State and religion in the broader context of the history, politics, and theory of the Church-State relationship. From a lawyer's perspective, the book provides an account of the case law and doctrine in specific areas, including religious freedom, religious equality, denominational autonomy, and Church-State separation, while also giving these subjects a comparative and theoretical treatment. For those approaching Church and State from different perspectives - including historians, political scientists, sociologists, and theologians - it offers an accessible and contextual account of the constitutional dimensions of the State-religion relationship. It explores the constitutional provisions as an expression of, but also a potential fetter upon, the evolving social and political role of religion.

Law and Religion in Ireland, 1700-1970

Law and Religion in Ireland, 1700-1970
Author: Kevin Costello
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2021-10-29
Genre: Law
ISBN: 303074373X

This book focuses, from a legal perspective, on a series of events which make up some of the principal episodes in the legal history of religion in Ireland: the anti-Catholic penal laws of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century; the shift towards the removal of disabilities from Catholics and dissenters; the dis-establishment of the Church of Ireland; and the place of religion, and the Catholic Church, under the Constitutions of 1922 and 1937.

Minority Religions under Irish Law

Minority Religions under Irish Law
Author: Kathryn O'Sullivan
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2019-05-07
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9004398252

Minority Religions under Irish Law focuses the spotlight specifically on the legal protections afforded in Ireland to minority religions, generally, and to the Muslim community, in particular. Although predominantly focused on the Irish context, the book also boasts contributions from leading international academics, considering questions of broader global importance such as how to create an inclusive environment for minority religions and how to regulate religious tribunals best. Reflecting on issues as diverse as the right to education, marriage recognition, Islamic finance and employment equality, Minority Religions under Irish Law provides a comprehensive and fresh look at the legal space occupied by many rapidly growing minority religions in Ireland, with a special focus on the Muslim community.

Separating Church and State

Separating Church and State
Author: Steven K. Green
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2022-03-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1501762087

Steven K. Green, renowned for his scholarship on the separation of church and state, charts the career of the concept and helps us understand how it has fallen into disfavor with many Americans. In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson distilled a leading idea in the early American republic and wrote of a wall of separation between church and state. That metaphor has come down from Jefferson to twenty-first-century Americans through a long history of jurisprudence, political contestation, and cultural influence. This book traces the development of the concept of separation of church and state and the Supreme Court's application of it in the law. Green finds that conservative criticisms of a separation of church and state overlook the strong historical and jurisprudential pedigree of the idea. Yet, arguing with liberal advocates of the doctrine, he notes that the idea remains fundamentally vague and thus open to loose interpretation in the courts. As such, the history of a wall of separation is more a variable index of American attitudes toward the forces of religion and state. Indeed, Green argues that the Supreme Court's use of the wall metaphor has never been essential to its rulings. The contemporary battle over the idea of a wall of separation has thus been a distraction from the real jurisprudential issues animating the contemporary courts.

The Oxford Handbook of Church and State in the United States

The Oxford Handbook of Church and State in the United States
Author: Derek Davis
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2010-11-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0195326245

21 essays present a scholarly look at the intricacies and past and current debates that frame the American system of church and state, within 5 main areas: history, politics, sociology theology/philosophy and law.

Ireland

Ireland
Author: Gustave de Beaumont
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674031113

Paralleling his friend Alexis de Tocqueville's visit to America, Gustave de Beaumont traveled through Ireland in the mid-1830s to observe its people and society. In Ireland, he chronicles the history of the Irish and offers up a national portrait on the eve of the Great Famine. Published to acclaim in France, Ireland remained in print there until 1914. The English edition, translated by William Cooke Taylor and published in 1839, was not reprinted. In a devastating critique of British policy in Ireland, Beaumont questioned why a government with such enlightened institutions tolerated such oppression. He was scathing in his depiction of the ruinous state of Ireland, noting the desperation of the Catholics, the misery of repeated famines, the unfair landlord system, and the faults of the aristocracy. It was not surprising the Irish were seen as loafers, drunks, and brutes when they had been reduced to living like beasts. Yet Beaumont held out hope that British liberal reforms could heal Ireland's wounds. This rediscovered masterpiece, in a single volume for the first time, reproduces the nineteenth-century Taylor translation and includes an introduction on Beaumont and his world. This volume also presents Beaumont's impassioned preface to the 1863 French edition in which he portrays the appalling effects of the Great Famine. A classic of nineteenth-century political and social commentary, Beaumont's singular portrait offers the compelling immediacy of an eyewitness to history.

Freedom of Religion Or Belief

Freedom of Religion Or Belief
Author: Heiner Bielefeldt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 701
Release: 2016
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0198703988

This commentary on freedom of religion or belief provides a comprehensive overview of the pressing issues of freedom of religion or belief from an international law perspective.

The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland

The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland
Author: Crawford Gribben
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198868189

Ireland has long been regarded as a 'land of saints and scholars'. Yet the Irish experience of Christianity has never been simple or uncomplicated. The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland describes the emergence, long dominance, sudden division, and recent decline of Ireland's most important religion, as a way of telling the history of the island and its peoples. Throughout its long history, Christianity in Ireland has lurched from crisis to crisis. Surviving the hostility of earlier religious cultures and the depredations of Vikings, evolving in the face of Gregorian reformation in the 11th and 12th centuries and more radical protestant renewal from the 16th century, Christianity has shaped in foundational ways how the Irish have understood themselves and their place in the world. And the Irish have shaped Christianity, too. Their churches have staffed some of the religion's most important institutions and developed some of its most popular ideas. But the Irish church, like the island, is divided. After 1922, a border marked out two jurisdictions with competing religious politics. The southern state turned to the Catholic church to shape its social mores, until it emerged from an experience of sudden-onset secularization to become one of the most progressive nations in Europe. The northern state moved more slowly beyond the protestant culture of its principal institutions, but in a similar direction of travel. In 2021, fifteen hundred years on from the birth of Saint Columba, Christian Ireland appears to be vanishing. But its critics need not relax any more than believers ought to despair. After the failure of several varieties of religious nationalism, what looks like irredeemable failure might actually be a second chance. In the ruins of the church, new Columbas and Patricks shape the rise of another Christian Ireland.

The Study of Religions in Ireland

The Study of Religions in Ireland
Author: Brendan McNamara
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2022-06-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1350291765

This book provides a comprehensive and field-defining examination of the study of religions in Ireland. By bringing together some of the foremost experts on religions in an Irish context, it critically traces the development of an important field of study and evaluates the thematic threads that have emerged as significant. It thereby offers an assessment of contemporary religions in Ireland and their relationships to society, culture, economics, politics and the State. Contributors make connections between topics as diverse as Ireland's Revolutionary Period, the formation of the Irish State, the decline of Catholicism, the rise of migrant religions and New Religious Movements and the effects of secularisation on religions and society. This book emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of the study of religions whilst illustrating the coherent themes that have shaped the development of the field in Ireland, making it unique.