Religious Conscience, the State, and the Law: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Significance ed. by John McLaren, Harold Coward (review)

HUMANITIES 141 authority to powerful private interests. Moon thus not only offers an important new justification of freedom of expression. He implicitly suggests a new mission for the guarantee and perhaps for constitutional rights in general: to serve as instruments that mediate some of the adverse consequences of the exercise of public and private power on the social dimension of human existence. (PATRICK MACKLEM) John McLaren and Harold Coward, editors. Religious Conscience, the State, and the Law: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Significance State University of New York Press. xviii, 248. US $21.95 This book is an edited volume of essays oriented around the topic of religious conscience and its relation to politics and law. The editors suggest, in their introductory chapter, that the book is >a beginning contribution= intended to address the complex problems of conscience manifest in >our contemporary world.= The editors correctly describe the book=s fourteen chapters largely as being >case studies= on various issues of religious conscience in particular contexts. The chapters are vignettes, tending to be about twelve pages long without their endnotes; and, in the main, the pithy depictions are instructive and worth attention. Alvin Esau paints an important little picture of North American Hutterites, detailing disputes involving their conception of communal property. Carol Weisbrod inks an excellent miniature of the Mormons in America, and John McLaren=s small snapshot of the treatment of Doukhobors in Canada should not be missed. Other studies depict, inter alia: debates over conscience in seventeenth-century England; conscience and the Enlightenment; the role of Jewish NGOs in developing human rights of religion; religious law in India; and the Muslim experience in the West. The book suffers from its editing, however. The organization of the chapters, first of all, is curious, jumping around across time, place, and topic, with no obvious direction to the movement. Second, and more seriously, many of the authors lay out the same groundwork in their contributions. Chapters 2, 4, 5, and 10 variously restate propositions on the historical origins of religious liberty, the Toleration Act of 1689, and conflict following the Reformation. Especially given the constraints placed on the tiny pieces, such repetition is a mark of poor editing. But what is worse, the book is not sufficiently integrative or synthetic. For instance, James Youngblood Henderson, in his chapter on Aboriginal peoples in North America, contends that the terrible treatment of those peoples raises hard questions about Christian evangelical missions. He suggests that Christians >should suspend missionary activity= in Aboriginal territories; this resonates with a note struck in Robert Baird=s chapter on religion in India. Baird notes that the Indian Supreme Court recognizes a 142 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 right to propagate religious beliefs, but no right to undertake to convert others. Not only do the editors fail to consider the applicability of the Indian model to the North American Aboriginal context, they do not even bother to distil the material elements of the chapters. Another example of this editorial laxity can be seen when one compares the interesting chapters on the Hutterites and India, respectively. Esau suggests that in cases of schism, such as the one witnessed within the Lakeside Hutterite group, courts may do well to avoid the >theological morass= of trying to establish which group is closer to church orthodoxy. This suggestion runs contrary to what Baird tells us is the current practice in India, where the Supreme Court involves itself closely in interpreting religious doctrine. The court in India has distinguished between a religious group=s religious and secular affairs, upheld the right of the state to regulate and oversee the daily activities of temples, and eliminated the hereditary appointment of temple priests. Here, the two chapters present contrasting images of court involvement with church matters; but the editors include no chapter flagging the difference for readers, much less consider whether the involvement of courts in deciphering doctrine is judicious or morally acceptable. Religious Conscience, the State, and the Law opens with the question, >What are we to do if the dictates of our religious conscience bring us into conflict with the state and its laws?= No answer to that question is offered in the book, unfortunately, despite...