The Foundations and Frontiers of Religious Liberty (Witte, 2007)
Introduction to symposium studying seven countries in the common law tradition
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Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment (Witte, 2005)
Introduction to “Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment” (2nd edition)
Sex may be free, but children come with a cost we must accept (Witte, 2008)
Thirty-eight percent of all American children are now born out of wedlock, and it costs American taxpayers $112 billion per year. Those are the sobering numbers recently reported by the U.S. Bureau of the Census and by the Institute for American Values.
The Legal Challenges of Religious Polygamy (Witte, 2008)
A century and a half ago, Mormons made national headlines by claiming a First Amendment right to practice polygamy, despite criminal laws against it. In four cases from 1879 to 1890, the United States Supreme Court firmly rejected their claim, and threatened to dissolve the Mormon church if they persisted…These old cases are still the law of the land, and most Mormons renounced polygamy after 1890.
Christianity and Democracy in Global Context: Introduction (Witte, 1993)
A number of persistent patterns prevail in the encounters between Christianity and democracy in the past, and a number of common challenges face Christianity and democracy in cultures throughout the world.
The Perils of Celibacy: Clerical Marriage and the Protestant Reformation (Witte, 2002)
In this Lecture, I would like to revisit the original Protestant case against clerical celibacy and for clerical marriage in its sixteenth century Lutheran Reformation context. I shall then draw out a few implications of the significance of these historical battles for the theology and law of clerical celibacy and marriage today.
Facts and Fictions of Separation of Church and State (Witte, 2005)
I shall argue that, long before Jefferson penned his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, the eighteenth-century American founders had at least five understandings of separation of church and state, several with deep Western roots. Each of these understandings made important contributions to the protection of religious liberty in the nineteenth century. Each of these understandings still hold enduring lessons for us today, as I shall argue by way of conclusion.
Freedom of a Christian: The Lutheran Reformation as Revolution (Witte, 2004)
The Lutheran Reformation did not realize immediately the transforming power of Luther’s founding ideals of liberty, equality, and dignity. But later Western revolutionaries took these ideals as so “self-evident” that revolutions were fought for their abridgement and constitutions were forged for their protection.
The Future of Marriage (Witte, 2008)
What forms of marriage should citizens be able to choose, and what forms of religious marriage law should government be required to respect? These are “unavoidable” questions for any modern society dedicated to protecting both the civil
and religious liberties of all its citizens.
Prophets, Priests and Kings: John Milton and the Reformation of Rights and Liberties in England (Witte, 2008)
In this Article, I focus on the development of rights talk in the pre-Enlightenment Protestant tradition. More particularly,
I show how early modern Calvinists—those Protestants inspired by the teachings of Genevan reformer John
Calvin (1509–1564)—developed a theory of fundamental rights as part and product of a broader constitutional
theory of resistance and military revolt against tyranny…..As an illustration of this broader story, this Article focuses on the reformation of rights and liberties led by the great English poet and philosopher, John Milton (1604–1674).