Legal Theory Workshop: Jeffrey Stout

LEGAL THEORY WORKSHOP

presents

Jeffrey Stout
Princeton University
Department of Religion

Religion and Politics: Doubts about the Great Separation Story

Friday, October 27, 2017
12:30 - 2:00
Solarium (room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park

Many intellectuals posit a Great Separation of religion from politics in modernity. There are disputes over how the Great Separation was achieved, whether its effects were good, bad, or mixed, and whether it was permanent or temporary. The disputes assume that a Great Separation in fact took place, that we know what it was, and that it set the terms in which politics was conducted where and while it lasted. This paper questions these assumptions. It does so, first, by calling attention to the roles played by religion in egalitarian freedom movements and by considering how those movements carried forward ancient, medieval, and early modern thinking about the relationship of religion to political power. 

Bio: Since 1975 Jeffrey Stout has taught at Princeton University, where he holds a professorship in Religion and is affiliated with the departments of Philosophy and Politics. His most recent books are Democracy and Tradition and Blessed Are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America, both published by Princeton University Press. In May of this year, he delivered a series of six Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh on the topic of religion and its relation to political power.

To be added to the paper distribution list, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.  For further information, please contact Professor Larissa Katz (larissa.katz@utoronto.ca) and Professor Sophia Moreau (sr.moreau@utoronto.ca).