DPI-342: Religion, Politics, and Public Policy

Semester: Not Offered

Credit: 1.0

Faculty: Richard Parker

Schedule

Day Time Location
First Day
Meet Day
Review

Description

Religion may well be the most powerful, yet seriously unexamined, force in the 21st century. Science, plus democratic and market-based cultures, have stripped religion of much of its central claims to public authority, yet left unanswered a range of questions, such as: As a public figure, how should you judge political and policy claims of religiously based groups or issues? How should we conceive of, and organize, public life in ways that allow for tolerant religious debate? If you believe in God, how can you — as a person in public life — live and act in concert with your religious beliefs? Recent debates on abortion rights, the Christian Right, and “family values” and earlier debates on abolition, sufferance, and temperance all have deeply religious dimensions. Millions of Americans have “rediscovered” religious beliefs. The course examines the shape of American religious beliefs today and probes how they continue to arise in law, politics, economics, the press, publ