{"id":2572,"date":"2013-04-17T17:33:51","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T00:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.consciencelaws.org\/?p=2572"},"modified":"2018-03-08T20:52:11","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T04:52:11","slug":"religion-a-public-or-a-private-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.consciencelaws.org\/?p=2572","title":{"rendered":"Religion: A Public or a Private Right?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Originally appeared in\u00a0<i> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/\">Public Discourse:\u00a0 Ethics, Law, and the Common Good<\/a><br \/>\n<\/i>Online journal of the <a href=\"http:\/\/winst.org\/\">Witherspoon\u00a0 Institute<\/a> of Princeton, NJ<\/p>\n<p class=\"author\">\u00a0Susan Hanssen<a href=\"https:\/\/www.consciencelaws.org\/authors.aspx#Susan_Hanssen\">*<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Twentieth-century religious liberty jurisprudence developed on the far side of a great historic chasm that separates us from the traditional definition of religion. Between Americans in 2012 and the American founders in 1776 stand William James and the beginnings of the \u201cscience of comparative religions.\u201d If we are to grasp the founders\u2019 idea of a natural right to religious liberty, we must perform a labor of historical imagination and recover the longstanding definition of religion that has been lost to us.<\/p>\n<p>The classic book that launched the social scientific approach to the study of religion was James\u2019s <i>The Varieties of Religious Experience<\/i> (1903). The book was initially his series of lectures at the University of Edinburgh\u2014the prestigious Gifford Lectures. James deliberately refused to accept the usual title \u201cGifford Lectures in Natural Theology\u201d for his series of talks and chose instead to call them lectures in \u201cNatural Religion.\u201d He assumed that religion was not, as the word \u201ctheology\u201d implied, subject to any rational justification. Rather, he saw religion as essentially experiential and the study of religion as essentially empirical\u2014the collection of a variety of accounts of wildly divergent spiritual experiences. . . [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.consciencelaws.org\/religion\/religion019.aspx\">Read more<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally appeared in\u00a0 Public Discourse:\u00a0 Ethics, Law, and the Common Good Online journal of the Witherspoon\u00a0 Institute of Princeton, NJ \u00a0Susan Hanssen* Twentieth-century religious liberty jurisprudence developed on the far side of a great historic chasm that separates us from the traditional definition of religion. Between Americans in 2012 and the American founders in 1776 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/news.consciencelaws.org\/?p=2572\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Religion: A Public or a Private Right?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5432,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[460,459,295],"tags":[454],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-2572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary-religion","category-pluralism-secularism","category-religious-freedom","tag-susan-hanssen"],"yoast_head":"\r\n<title>Religion: A Public or a Private Right? - Protection of Conscience Project News<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.consciencelaws.org\/?p=2572\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Religion: A Public or a Private Right? - Protection of Conscience Project News\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Originally appeared in\u00a0 Public Discourse:\u00a0 Ethics, Law, and the Common Good Online journal of the Witherspoon\u00a0 Institute of Princeton, NJ \u00a0Susan Hanssen* Twentieth-century religious liberty jurisprudence developed on the far side of a great historic chasm that separates us from the traditional definition of religion. 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