CFP: Religion and Law at SECSOR 2016

This year has been chock-full of interesting developments in American religion and law, many of which have been chronicled on the blog. With the Kim Davis story dominating the news cycle the last few days, this seems as good a time as any to share the following CFP for the religion and law section at SECSOR. The conference will be held in Atlanta, and is a great opportunity for people living in the Southeast (or who’d like to visit the Southeast!). While some parts of the call are aimed at developments within the United States, we are very interested in work on religion and law in non-US contexts. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact myself or Brad Stoddard.

For the 2016 meeting, we are especially interested in papers addressing: (1) The Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), (2) Sincerely-held religious belief, (3) Tolerance, pluralism, and the law, (4) Recent Supreme Court decisions such as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Holt v. Hobbs, and (5) Conflict and Consensus: Christianity, Civil Rights, and Religious Freedom in the United States (joint session with History of Christianity). As evidenced by Indiana’s recent Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the relationship between “religious freedom” and other notions of “human rights” or “civil rights” is far from settled. What can scholars interested in the evolution of religious freedom, Christian history, and American history more broadly learn by studying the contested and disputed state of religious liberty in the past fifty years?

In addition, we are always interested in papers related to religion and law generally. Send proposals to Brad Stoddard ([email protected]) and Michael Graziano ([email protected]). If you are proposing a paper or panel for the joint session with History of Christianity, please indicate this in your e-mail.

*Image Credit: Mike on Flickr.

A Group Blog on American Religious History and Culture