And academics in religious studies. Students studying law and religion courses. Leaders and engaged members of churches and religious organizations.

Despite the profound influence that religious organizations exert, religion occupies a curiously marginal place in organization theory. This volume aims to make available in one place existing knowledge on religion and organizations, encouraging more organization theorists to include religion as part of their research activities and agenda.

Nationally recognized litigator, Daniel P. Dalton, shares expert insights on litigating three types of religious property disputes. This information will be valuable for religious organizations and their counsel.

Nonprofit Law for Religious Organizations: Essential Questions & Answers is a hands-on guide to the most pertinent and critical legal issues facing those who lead and manage religious tax-exempt organizations with an emphasis on tax, employment, property and constitutional law. This timely book is a response to the need for guidance, direction, and clarification of legal and tax laws affecting churches and other religious organizations.

The Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, as proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1981, is the only universal human rights instrument specifically focusing on religious intolerance and discrimination. However, recent years have seen increasing controversy surrounding this right, in both political and legal contexts. The European Court of Human Rights has experienced a vast expansion in the number of cases it has had brought before it concerning religious freedom, and politically the boundaries of the right have been much disputed. This book provides a systematic analysis of the different approaches to religious rights which exist in public international law. The book explores how particular institutional perspectives emerge in the context of these differing approaches. It examines, and challenges, these institutional perspectives. It identifies new directions for approaching religious rights through international law by examining existing legal tools, and assesses their achievements and shortcomings. It studies religious organisations' support for international human rights protection, as well as religious critique of international human rights and the development of an alternative religious 'Bills of Rights'. It investigates whether expressions of members belonging to religious minorities can be considered under the minority right to culture, rather than the right to religion, and discusses the benefits and shortcomings of such a route. It analyses the reach and limits of the provisions in the 1981 Declaration, identifies ways in which the right is being eroded as a concept, and suggests new ways in which the right can be reinforced and protected.

One of the great tasks, perhaps the greatest, weighing on modern international lawyers is to craft a universal law and legal process capable of ordering relations among diverse people with differing religions, histories, cultures, laws, and languages. In so doing, we need to take the world's peoples as we find them and not pretend out of existence their wide variety. This volume builds on the eleven essaysedited by Mark Janis in 1991 in The Influence of Religion and the Development of International Law, more than doubling its authors and essays and covering more religious traditions. Now included are studies of the interface between international law and ancient religions, Confucianism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as essays addressing the impact of religious thought on the literature and sources of international law, international courts, and human rights law.

I have for a number of years, since my retirement from teaching elementary school for thirty-three years, contemplated the possibility of writing a book expressing a few of my strongly held beliefs. Events of the recent past had accelerated that urge. The now defunct immoral Moral Majority, the spiritless Christian Coalition, the satanic Southern Baptist, and the hypocritical Church of Christ, plus other bigoted and hypocritical religious groups, keep waving their spiritless and satanic doctrines in my face while desecrating the flag of the United States by wrapping themselves in it. My personal philosophy of life is based upon the fact that “I am the pessimistically optimistic realist with a bent of humanistic pragmatism.” I choose to believe that things shall work out for the better but I know that if there be the slightest opportunity, someone is going to throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery. I am a non-believer in organized religious faiths of any kind. I do not believe in any god that listens to or talks to man. I am a Deist. I believe that man would not have created his gods and religious faiths if he had had more faith in himself with a better understanding of his universe and nature. I do not wish to be negative, simply realistic. My head is not floating in the clouds or buried in the sod. My mind is open to any logically developed philosophies. My use of rational logic will not allow me to be convinced or swayed by irrational, supernatural religious faiths. The bigoted and hypocritical faith of Christianityis not my idea of the truth of reality or the reality of truth. Satanic and fundamental faiths such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have been the greatest forces formenting most of the hatred, violence, and wars in this world. Organized religions have proven themselves to be the greatest deterrents in the advancement of humanity among the peoples of this world.

Modern statesmen and political theorists have long struggled to design institutions that will simultaneously respect individual freedom of religion, nurture religion's capacity to be a force for civic good and human rights, and tame religion's illiberal tendencies. Moving past the usual focus on personal free expression of religion, this illuminating book - written by renowned scholars of law and religion from the United States, England, and Israel - considers how the institutional design of both religions and political regimes influences the relationship between religious practice and activity and human rights. The authors examine how the organization of religious communities affects human rights, and investigate the scope of a just state's authority with respect to organized religion in the name of human rights. They explore the institutional challenges posed by, and possible responses to, the fraught relationship between religion and rights in the world today.

God vs. the Gavel challenges the pervasive assumption that all religious conduct deserves constitutional protection. While religious conduct provides many benefits to society, it is not always benign. The thesis of the book is that anyone who harms another person should be governed by the laws that govern everyone else - and truth be told, religion is capable of great harm. This may not sound like a radical proposition, but it has been under assault since the 1960s. The majority of academics and many religious organizations would construct a fortress around religious conduct that would make it extremely difficult to prosecute child abuse by clergy, medical neglect of children by faith-healers, and other socially unacceptable behaviors. This book intends to change the course of the public debate over religion by bringing to the public's attention the tactics of religious entities to avoid the law and therefore harm others.