Queens Federation of Churches

Links to Religious Liberty Resources
from Ecumenical Ministry in Queens

GENERAL RESOURCES ACADEMIC RESOURCES ADVOCACY ORGANIZATIONS

Organizations Signing the Consensus Statement on
Religious Liberty, Public Education, and the Future of American Democracy

General Resources

Center for Studies on New Religions – Features an archive of extraordinary depth, cataloged by topic, nation and over a hundred NRMs. This is an international forum with most of the items in English.

FindLaw — Searchable Database of US Supreme Court Decisions since 1893

First Amendment Center of the Freedom Forum

International Study Consultation on Religious Freedom and the Rights of Religious Minorities – The Consultation drew participants from churches, church related organizations, academia, civil society and human rights organizations and legal professionals from 23 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Americas and Europe. It met from November 27 to December 2, 2011, in Istanbul, Turkey, as part of an international study consultation organized by the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs of the World Council of Churches. His All Holiness, Ecumencial Patriarch Bartholomew I, welcomed and addressed the participants. The Consultation analysed the situations of rights of religious minorities and freedom of religion in various contexts. Many of the report are available here in Adobe Acrobat format (pdf):

The Law of Church and State in America by Dean M. Kelley – An online publication of this 5-volume work completed in 1997 by the Rev. Dean M. Kelley, long-time Director for Religious and Civil Liberties of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. This work is structured around important functions or aspects of the religious enterprise. Volume I deals with the autonomy of religious bodies, that is, their rights to manage their own internal affairs. Volume II deals with the outreach activities of religious bodies as they relate to the external world. Volume III treats of the inculcation of the faith by or on behalf of religious bodies (and a wide array of educational practices pertaining to religion in public schools). Volume IV studies the patterns of protecting the practice of the faith by the faithful in the secular world. And Volume V focuses on state shelters for religion— institutionalized provisions for “protecting” religion, such as legal exemptions (as from taxation), governmental “proprietaries” (such as chaplaincies), folk-practices of civil religion or the public cultus that become enmeshed with state action, and the perplexities of governmental efforts to define (or to avoid defining) “religion” and “church.”

Legal Information Institute – Cornell Law School sponsors this user friendly website to assist those conducting legal research in many areas of the law.

Library of Congress – A superb exhibition on American religious liberty which focuses on the colonial and constitutional periods of American history.

Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life

Religious Expression in American Public Life – A Joint Statement of Current Law – The drafters' purpose in crafting this statement is to help foster an accurate understanding of current law and improve our national dialogue on these issues. While there is disagreement among the drafters about the merits of some of the court decisions and laws mentioned in the document, the drafters agree that current law protects the rights of people to express their religious convictions and practice their faiths on government property and in public life as described in the statement. In other words, while this diverse group often disagrees about how the law should address issues regarding the intersection of religion and government, it agrees in many cases on what the law is today. More broadly, the drafters also agree that religious liberty, or freedom of conscience, is a fundamental, inalienable right for all people, religious and nonreligious, and that there is a need to correct misunderstandings about this right. The joint statement, which is formatted in a Q and A style, seeks to provide accessible and useful information for Americans about this area of law.

RJ&L Religious Liberty Archive – View Supreme Court cases and commentaries, state statutes, and important historical documents and speeches relevant to religious freedom in the United States.