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"Foreword" [2018] ELECD 785; in Ahdar, Rex (ed), "Research Handbook on Law and Religion" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) xii

Book Title: Research Handbook on Law and Religion

Editor(s): Ahdar, Rex

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781788112468

Section Title: Foreword

Number of pages: 7

Extract:

Foreword John Witte, Jr
Over the past two generations, a major new field of law and religion study has emerged, involving more than 1500 scholars around the globe. They are studying the religious dimensions of law, the legal dimensions of religion, and the interaction of legal and religious ideas and institutions, methods and practices ­ historically and today. These scholars have shown that, at a fundamental level, religion gives law its spirit and inspires its adherence to ritual, tradition, and justice. Law gives religion its structure and encourages its devotion to order, organization, and orthodoxy. Law and religion share such ideas as fault, obligation, and covenant, and such methods as ethics, rhetoric, and textual interpretation. Law and religion also balance each other by counterpoising justice and mercy, rule and equity, discipline and love. It is this dialectical interaction that gives these two disciplines and two dimensions of life their vitality and their strength. Without law at its backbone, religion slowly crumbles into shallow spiritualism. Without religion at its heart, law gradually crumbles into empty, and sometimes brutal, formalism. In the United States, the study of law and religion has drawn a substantial scholarly guild. The Association of American Law Schools has a large section of members on law and religion, and growing sections on Jewish law and Christian law as well ­ collectively involving nearly 500 American law professors. Law and religion themes are also becoming more prominent in the Association's other sections ­ and in parallel legal societies ­ on legal history, ...