Interpreting the Bible and the Constitution

Pelikán, Jaroslav

doi:10.12987/yale/9780300102673.001.0001

Cited by 15 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Pelikan the rights originally reserved for some, the scientific and technological transformation of an entire society, the burgeoning of religious pluralism. 133 Even Pelikan admits that his "triumphalism may seem excessive to some present-day sensibilities," including those of us who do not call the American republic home, but the notes themselves, to a greater or lesser extent, seem likely to be guiding most judges in most nations when they interpret their own constitutions with a view to determining the relationship between religion and state.…”

Section: De Facto Constitutions: Interpretive Techniques and Resultinmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…that functions as the normative American Scripture." 158 And Hirschl extends Pelikan's claim about the U.S. Constitution to all constitutions, pointing to the pseudo-religious dimensions of constitutionalism itself. 159 Paradoxically, then, inherent to their very operation then, constitutions, even those that appear, textually, to sit firmly at the secular-separation end of the continuum, look a lot like religious texts, a lot like scripture.…”

Section: Pseudo-religious Pullmentioning

confidence: 96%

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Religion and Constitutionalism: Oscillations Along a Continuum

Babie¹

2014

Journal of Religious History

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This review article analyses three books published between 2010 and 2013 and explores the ways in which a nation, secular or otherwise, can deal with religion within its borders, both legally and socially. For many nations, this means employing a foundational document or text, usually a constitution, to exclude religion from, neutrally to structure its participation in, or actively to promote a particular type of it in the public arena. The article develops two primary themes. First, using Ran Hirschl's work, it reveals a continuum of approaches to the constitutional treatment of religion; yet, in plotting those points along the continuum, what one finds is far from precision placement; rather, there is oscillation around several points. Second, in considering specific constitutions, it becomes apparent that the more difficult or ambiguous it is to modify or amend a formal text, the greater the importance assumed by judicially developed interpretative techniques.

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Section: De Facto Constitutions: Interpretive Techniques and Resultinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pseudo-religious Pullmentioning

confidence: 96%

Religion and Constitutionalism: Oscillations Along a Continuum

Babie¹

2014

Journal of Religious History

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“…Jaroslav Pelikan, who has explored this relationship in general terms, notes that "both the New Testament and the Constitution are set within historical periods that are endowed with a special aura by their traditions and that carry a unique authority for their communities." 45 Tracing a clear interpretive overlap in antebellum biblical and constitutional readings grounds this discussion. By analyzing these interpretive traditions together, I demonstrate just how pervasive an emphasis on recovering "original meanings" through historical interpretation had become in antebellum America.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Slavery and Sacred Texts

Watkins

2021

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Lincoln crafted a historical narrative of the American founding that countered the one that Chief Justice Roger B. Taney had used in Dred Scott v. Sandford. In his Supreme Court decision, given three months prior to Lincoln's address, the chief justice had admitted that if "the general words" of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence "were used in a similar instrument at this day," they would be understood to "embrace the whole human family." 1 Taney had dismissed that observation as irrelevant and, as Lincoln explained, had insisted that the declaration's authors "did not intend to include negroes." 2 Challenging Taney's assumption "that the public estimate of the black man is more favorable now than it was in the days of the Revolution," Lincoln argued that "in those days, our Declaration . . . was . . . thought to include all," while in 1857, the declaration was set aside "to aid in making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal." 3 The Kentucky-born lawyer conceded that the founders "did not mean to assert . . . that all were then actually enjoying that equality" but that they "meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit." 4 Otherwise, Lincoln explained, if the founders had created the declaration as a temporary measure rather than a rights-bearing writ meant "for future use," then the "doings of that day had no reference to

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“…Many scholars trace the convention of capitalizing the terms Constitution, Constitutionalism, Founders, and Framers to views holding that the Constitution should be treated as literally or virtually sacred, the “scripture” of America's “civil religion” (e.g., Levinson, :130; Pelikan, :4, 20–36). Conformity to these conventions in this article does not express any judgment on this Constitutional philosophy, simply compliance with the policies of the Social Science Quarterly .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Constitutional Philosophy of Barack Obama: Democratic Pragmatism and Religious Commitment

Smith

2012

Social Science Quarterly

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Objectives This article examines whether Barack Obama has a Constitutional philosophy and, if so, what those ideas are. Methods The article notes contrasting scholarly views on whether Obama's career exhibits consistent ideas and on the content of his ideas. It uses interpretive exposition of Obama's major writings, speeches, and presidential initiatives, based on all of Obama's writings and speeches through 2010, to identify Obama's ideas. Results Obama generally expresses and acts on views that accord with modern democratic pragmatist philosophic beliefs in deliberative democracy. It has not been fully recognized that Obama interprets the meaning of the U.S. Constitution as embodying these beliefs; that he blends this Constitutional view with egalitarian commitments that he identifies with black church social justice values; and that he sees the American Constitutional system's central goal as building greater public unity without effacing diversity. Conclusions Obama belongs to the modern democratic pragmatist tradition elaborated by American thinkers and political leaders since the Progressive era, but his distinctive Constitutional version of this outlook stresses deliberative democratic processes, black church social justice values, and the contention that the goal of the American Constitutional system is “e pluribus unum,” “out of many, one.”

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Interpreting the Bible and the Constitution

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Religion and Constitutionalism: Oscillations Along a Continuum

Religion and Constitutionalism: Oscillations Along a Continuum

Slavery and Sacred Texts

The Constitutional Philosophy of Barack Obama: Democratic Pragmatism and Religious Commitment

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