Religion, Race, Rights

'Little torques public policy in modern America quite like race, rights, and religion. The mix is explosive, fodder for shock-jocks of all political stripes. Few however appreciate the historical forces that gave shape to contemporary culture wars. Fewer still perceive that vehemently opposed positions share common roots in the religious history of Europe and its cultural offspring. Brilliantly and concisely canvassing five hundred years of the history of the west, Darian-Smith accounts for the lineage of complex ideas that inform contemporary America. She does so with clarity, insight, and sensitivity. This outstanding work is essential reading for those who would understand our shared present.' W. Wesley Pue, Professor of Law and Nathan Nemetz Professor of Legal History, University of British Columbia 'Darian-Smith's new book is an example of what is most exciting about new scholarship in the humanities. It works across disciplinary and methodological boundaries in its attempt to deal with one of our most pressing current social problems - determining the consequences of the sometimes violent interaction of race, religion and law in times of social crisis. Darian-Smith explodes the myth of secularism in modern society, and the illusion of post-racialism, in her unblinking analysis of present dilemmas. Once you read this book you will never again think that the western concept of individual rights is sufficient to resolve the contradictions of modern existence. This is a genuinely important step forward in western scholarship.' Stanley Katz, President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies and Professor, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. 'Eve Darian-Smith takes us on an amazing journey covering four centuries that brilliantly illuminates the continuously evolving interplay of law, religion, and race in the Anglo-American experience. This wonderfully readable book is imaginatively organized around a series of eight landmark 'law moments' that ingeniously show how legal rights are always being subtly shaped by culturally prevailing ideas about religion and race, a process that still goes on in our supposedly 21st century secular world that claims to be free of racism.' Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University. 'In this volume, Eve Darian-Smith offers a passionate, wide- ranging analysis of the complex, historically-vexed relations among religion, race, and rights over the past four plus centuries. The book begins, in 1517, with Martin Luther and ends, at the dawn of the new century, with the discriminatory labor practices of Walmart, the recent crusades of George Bush and his theocons, and the resurgence of religious faith. By way of a well-chosen sequence of 'legal landmarks' - each an historical drama in its own right, each a piece of theater in which judicial processes take center stage - Darian-Smith develops a compelling, complex critique of the law, of its inherent ambiguities, its violence, its possibilities. And its historical entailment in political, economic, social and ethical forces well beyond itself, forces that, repeatedly, have opened up a yawning gap between its ideological (self-)representation and the realities of its everyday practice. This is an ambitious work of scholarship, one which, by virtue of brush strokes at once deft and broad, challenges us to understand the legal underpinnings of our world in new ways.' John Comaroff, University of Chicago.