Beyond the Freakonomics of Religious Liberty

Received 15 January 2017. Accepted 22 February 2017. Published online 15 April 2017.The paper critiques the prevailing liberal market economy models of religious liberty and religious encounter. In place of market models, this paper argues that values inscribed in gift exchange, hospitality, guest/host relations, in many cases, and to varying degrees, provide better alternative values to govern religious interaction than those of the market model. Instead of conceiving religion as commodity for “sale” – adoption, conversion – and instead of conceiving missionaries as salespeople for their religions, I propose that the encounter of religions could be better conceived in terms of guest/host, gift giver/gift receiver relations. “Freakonomics”, therefore, – whether in free market or monopoly form – does not, therefore, write the last page in the story of religious liberty

What Do Religious Corporations Owe for Burdening Individual Civil Rights

Received 16 May 2019. Accepted 16 June 2019. Published online 1 July 2019.In the name of religious liberty, recent legislative initiatives by Christian nationalists seek broad legal exemptions from general law. This reflects an abiding antipathy to and a fear of the power of the state, the ultimate aim of which may be sovereignty for religious institutions. But, the claims of Christian nationalists are vulnerable to a series of critical objections. First, the rhetoric of religious liberty used by Christian nationalists plays on confusion between two senses of religious liberty – that of institutional religious freedom and that of individual freedom of religious conscience. These two senses need to be distinguished, since they are sometimes in fundamental conflict with one another, arguably to the extent of institutional religious freedom burdening individual religious conscience. Further, legal exemptions to general law that benefit particular religious institutions should also be recognized as gifts. They are not fundamental or inalienable rights. Therefore, granting such accommodations requires that religious communities benefitting from them should somehow reciprocate for their being exempted from common obligations under general law

Elementary Forms of the Metaphorical Life : Tropes at Work in Durkheim’s Theory of the Religious

Peer reviewedPostprin

Introduction: The Other Caillois: The Many Masks of Game Studies

The legacy of the rich, stratified work of Roger Caillois, the multifaceted and complex French scholar and intellectual, seems to have almost solely impinged on game studies through his most popular work, Les Jeux et les Hommes. Translated in English as Man, Play and Games, this is the text which popularized Caillois’ ideas among those who do study and research on games and game cultures today, and which most often appears in publications that attempt to historicize and introduce to the study of games—perhaps on a par with Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. The purpose of this article is to introduce the papers and general purposes of a collected edition that aims to shift the attention of game scholars toward a more nuanced and comprehensive view of Roger Caillois, beyond the textbook interpretations usually received in game studies over the last decade or so

On the jesuit-maronite provenance of lebanon's criminalization of homosexuality

Article 534 of the Lebanese Penal Code, effectively, criminalizes homosexual practices. Most commentators have claimed that its existence in modern Lebanon is a "colonial relic,"specifically of the French Mandate, 1920-1946. But since 1791, French penal codes have not criminalized same-sex relations. I argue, instead, that Article 534 was the product of native religious, legal, and moral thinking among the Maronites, reinforced by the Thomistic and post-Tridentine moral theology taught in Lebanon by the Jesuit missions. Thomistic and post-Tridentine moral theology classified same-sex relations as worthy of condemnation as "unnatural acts"-the same language used in Article 534. Therefore, as a product of Lebanese political and religious sectarianism, Article 534 is a specific case of a congenial collaboration of Jesuit moral theology and a conservative Maronite ethical and legal koine

Beyond the Freakonomics of Religious Liberty

The paper critiques the prevailing liberal market economy models of religious liberty and religious encounter. In place of market models, this paper argues that values inscribed in gift exchange, hospitality, guest/host relations, in many cases, and to varying degrees, provide better alternative values to govern religious interaction than those of the market model. Instead of conceiving religion as commodity for ‘sale’ – adoption, conversion – and instead of conceiving missionaries as salespeople for their religions, I propose that the encounter of religions could be better conceived in terms of guest/host, gift giver/gift receiver relations. “Freakonomics,” therefore, – whether in free market or monopoly form -- does not, therefore, write the last page in the story of religious liberty