Reports of individual sessions of the 21st Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, prepared by our students and by volunteer reporters, appear here as they become available. We are grateful to those who have performed this important service.
Reported by Tara Fitzgerald
United States Senator Orrin Hatch, speaking from his nearly 38 years of service in the U.S. Senate, delivered the Keynote Address at the opening session of the 21st Annual International Law and Religion Symposium held in the Moot Court Room of the J. Reuben Clark Law School on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Preceding his address, welcoming remarks were given by Dean James R. Rasband, Dean of the BYU Law School, as well as President Kevin J. Worthen, President of Brigham Young University and former Dean of the Law School. Senator Hatch was also presented with the Center’s... more
Moderator: Brett G. Scharffs, Associate Dean and Francis R. Kirkham Professor of Law; Associate Director, International Center for Law and Religion Studies, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University
Speakers: Brian J. Grim, President, Religious Freedom & Business Foundation; Slavica Jakelić, Associate Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia; and Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Thought, Honors College, Valparaiso University; Akinola Ibidapo-Obe, Professor and Dean, Faculty of Law, University of Lagos, University of Lagos, Nigeria; Daniel Philpott, Professor of Political Science and Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, Center for Civil and Human Rights, University of Notre Dame.
Reported by Gaylee Coverston
In this second plenary session, Elizabeth A. Clark, Associate Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, moderated our distinguished delegates Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Jean-Paul Willaime, and Effie Fokas. The session began with Professor Hurd, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Northwestern University. With a return of religious emphasis in the United States, discussions regarding religious freedom and secularism are on the rise. She delved into the question of varieties of secularism being... more
Reported by Ryan Andersen
In a session moderated by Professor Gary Doxey, Associate Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies, Professors Alberto Patiño Reyes, Joseph E. David, and Brett G. Scharffs discussed trends and aspects of modern secularism.
Alberto Patiño Reyes, of the University Iberoamericana - Santa Fe in Mexico City, spoke on the history and future of secularism in Latin America. He discussed the long and at times violent history of state patronage in the Roman Catholic Church throughout Latin America. He noted how some states, like Colombia and Peru, peacefully embraced a separation between church and state while others, like Mexico, required... more
Reported by Jedediah Knight
Moderator: David Kirkham
Participants Panel 1: Mariano Germán Mejia Jiménez, President, Supreme Court of Justice, Dominican Republic; Tore Lindholm, Norway; Guillermo García-Montúfar, Peru; Mohd Hasbi Abu Bakar, Singapore; Lyudmila Filipovich, Ukraine
Participants Panel 2: Byun-Sun Oh, South Korea; Sue Breeze, United Kingdom; J. Clifford Wallace, Senior Judge, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, United States; Elizabeth Clark, United States
Concluding Speaker: W. Cole Durham, Jr., President, International Center for Law and Religion Studies
During the final plenary session, several of the presenters were given the opportunity to share their reflections on the symposium.
Tore Lindholm summarized the concept of secularism, referring specifically to political secularism as a normative idea to be applied to states consisting of a plurality... more
Reported by Jedediah Knight
Moderator: Shon D. Hopkin, Assistant Professor of Religious Education, Brigham Young University
Speakers: Most Reverend Peter Comensoli, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia; Mohd Hasbi Abu Bakar, President, Jamiyah Singapore; Rev. James Christie, Professor of Dialogue Theology; Director, Ridd Institute for Religion & Global Policy, University of Winnipeg, Canada
During the first break-out session of Symposium 2014, three religious leaders addressed issue of secularism and the status of religion and secularism in their... more
Reported by Tara Fitzgerald
The Latin America Breakout Session held on Monday, October 6, 2014 in JRLB 205 was moderated by Professor Guillermo Garcia-Montufar of the University of Lima and consisted of a panel of government leaders from Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala.
Peru Congressman Julio Rosas Huaranga opened his remarks by expressing concern that religious freedom is being taken away in his country and that secularism is making its way into politics. He explained that although the constitution guarantees freedom of religion, opinion, and conscience,... more
Vietnam Report by Jarvis Yau
Presentation by the scholars from Vietnam was among the Symposium’s first breakout sessions on October 7th, 2014. It was moderated by Brett G. Scharffs, Associate Dean for Faculty and Curriculum at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, and Associate Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies. From among the six members of the delegations from Vietnam and the Lao Democratic People's Republic, three spoke: Dr. Anh Cuong Nguyen and Tai Tim Nguyen of Vietnam and Ly Koua Sayaxang, Permanent Acting President, Lao Front for National Construction of Vientiane Capital City.... more
Reported by Christina Champenois
Moderator: Wade Jacoby, Mary Lou Fulton Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of Europe, Brigham Young University
Speakers: Tamás Lukacs, former Member of Hungarian Parliament, Chair of the Committee for Human Rights, Minorities, Civil and Religious Affairs; current President, Hungarian Independent Police Complaints Board; Henryk Hoffmann, Director, Department of Religious History, Institute of Religious Studies, Jagellonian University, Poland, with Anna Książek, graduate student, Department of Religious History, Jagellonian University, Poland; Lucia Grešková, Deputy Director, Ministry of Culture... more
Reported by Gaylee Coverston
In this session, Center International Fellow J. Stanley Martineau moderated, with Víctor Hugo Sánchez Zebadúa, Sub-Secretary of Religious Affairs of the State Government of Chiapas, Alberto Patiño Reyes, Professor of Law and Religion in the department of the Iberoamericana University in Mexico City, Vicente Segú Marcos, Director of "La Fundación", and Jorge Lee Galindo, Director General, Lee and Associates Law... more
Reported by Jordan Pendergrass
On Monday, 6 October 2014, an entire session of the International Law and Religion Symposium was dedicated to Australia. Two points during the breakout session became very clear: change in Australia is happening and religious freedom is becoming an increasingly important right. In a session moderated by Arthur L. Edgson, the experts who delivered remarks during this session were Neil Foster, Professor, Newcastle Law School; Neville Rochow, Barrister/Board Member, University of Adelaide Research Unit for Society, Law, and Religion; and Nigel Zimmermann, Private Secretary to Most Reverend... more
Reported by Christina Champenois
Moderator: Shadman Bashir, Visiting Professor of Law and International Relations, History and Political Science Department, Dixie State University
Speakers: Lami Bertan Tokuzlu, Assistant Professor, Ýstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Dolapdere Kampüsü, Turkey; Alessandro Ferrari, Associate Professor, Department of Law and Economics of Films and Persons, University of Insubria, Italy; Kishan Manocha, Lecturer, University of East London School of Law, UK and School of International Law, Pakistan
Lami Bertan Tokuzlu focused on secularism and... more
Reported by Jordan Pendergrass
The theme of the 21st Annual International Law and Religion Symposium was “Varieties of Secularism, Religion, and the Law”. On 7 October 2014, one session was devoted to the perspectives of Latin American governments. The session was moderated by Scott Isaacson, Regional Coordinator for Latin America of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies.
The first presentation during the session was given by Frezia Sissi Villavicencio Rios, General Director of Justice and Religion, Ministry of Justice of Peru. Ms. Villavicencio demonstrated that the current intersection of law and religion in Peru is linked to its past. She noted the country’s diverse religious landscape and the fact that, notwithstanding the significant impact of colonization, many indigenous religions remain. Indigenous peoples, including the Andean... more
Reported by Ryan Andersen
Professor David Kirkham led a panel discussion on Freedom of Religious Belief and European Union Foreign Policy. Along with Professor Kirkham, Jean-Bernard Bolvin of the European External Action Service, Susan J. Breeze of the of the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s Human Rights & Democracy Department, and Pasquale Annicchino of the European University Institute, discussed the goals, methods, and methods used in promoting the freedom of religious belief around the world.
... more
Reported by Richard Alex Storms
A breakout session on Tuesday, October 7, 2014, was moderated by Mark A. Peterson, Associate Professor of Korean, Brigham Young University. There were two speakers who presented. The first speaker was Makoto Arai, Prof. Dr., Chairman, Religious Juridical Persons Council, Government of Japan and Professor, Chuo University Faculty of Law, Japan. The second speaker was Byung-Sun Oh, Professor Emeritus, Sogang University Law School, South Korea.
Professor Arai spoke about how religion and charitable trusts have worked together in Japan to help people. He first spoke about one of the most famous Buddhist monks in Japanese history, Kukai. In 828, Kukai established... more
Moderator: Leslie A. Hadfield, Assistant Professor of History, Brigham Young University
Speakers:
André Makengo Kisala Mazyambo, Professor, University of Kinshasa
Femi Falana, Hallmarks of Labor, Nigeria
Katshung Joseph Yav, Professor, Yav & Associates
Reported by Gaylee Coverston
Moderator: Gregory G. Clark, International Fellow, International Center for Law and Religion Studies, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University
Speakers: Uziel Santana, President, ANAJURE (National Association of Evangelical Jurists); Luigi Braga, General Counsel, South American Division, Seventh-day Adventist Church; Acyr de Gerone, Lawyer, Brazil Bar Association, Religious Freedom Committee of the BAR Association of Paraná State of Brazil; Raphael Trotman, Speaker, National Assembly of Guyana
This session began with Dr. Uziel Santana, President of ANAJURE, the National Association of Evangelical Jurists and a tenured professor... more
Reported by Roman Harper
This session, moderated by James A. Toronto, involved presentations by Andrea Pin, a professor at the University of Padova, Italy and Michael Casey, private secretary to the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia.
Mr. Casey presented on work that he is doing regarding "pathologies of religion and reason." His basic premise, which he highlighted with several examples, is that either religion or reason can "become strange creatures when separated from each other." One very poignant example shared was the current trend of recasting reasoned opposition... more
Moderator: J. Clifford Wallace, Chief Judge Emeritus, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Speakers: Mahaarum Kusuma Pertiwi, Lecturer, Universitas Gadjah Mada Faculty of Law, Indonesia; Rev. Henry Sandanam, Association of Social Services and Community Development, Gombak District, Malaysia
Moderator: N. Anthony Brown, Associate Professor of Russian, Brigham Young University
Speakers: Oleg Yurevich Goncharov, Member, Council for Cooperation with Religious Organizations under the President of the Russian Federation; Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, Associate Professor, Faculty of Theology, Yerevan State University, Armenia
Reported by Gaylee Coverston
In this session regarding European Perspectives on Secularism, Robert Smith moderated the panelists Tore Lindholm of Norway, Ricardo García García of Spain, Denis J. Edwards of the United Kingdom, and Vanja-Ivan Savić of Croatia.
Tore Lindholm is a Professor Emeritus of the Norwegian Center for Human Rights, University of Oslo. He is a Board Member for the Oslo Coalition of Freedom of Religion or Belief and also for the Human Rights Committee of the Church of Norway. Professor Lindholm began... more
Moderator: Victor A. Taylor, International Fellow, International Center for Law and Religion Studies
Speakers: Malou Mangahas, Executive Director, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism; Maria Cecilia de los Reyes, Training Director, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
Reported by Page Johnson
Moderator: Richard H. Page
Choinorov Sunrevtsoodol Khukhdandar
Prefacing her remarks with a quick overview of Mongolian topography and history, Choinorov Sunrevtsoodol Khukhdandar, senior official in the Ministry of Labor, discussed her country’s religious policy towards its population of 2.9 million. Of this group, 95% are Mongolian and 4.9 % are Kazakhs. One in every five Mongolians believes in traditional religion. A main theme of this paper is that as government policies and attitudes to religion have changed, religious beliefs have changed also. The present government is supportive of new religious developments if they... more
Speakers: Oleksandr Zhuravchak, Deputy Minister of Culture of Ukraine, Ministry of Culture of Ukraine; Liudmyla Fylypovych, Professor, Lecturer on Law and Religion, Center for Religious Information and Freedom, Institute of Philosophy, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine