God Caesar and the Freedom of Religion

About the Book

Summary of God, Caesar and the Freedom of Religion by Elizabeth Warren November 17, 2004 This book is a distillation of the current practices of 191 national governments concerning their respect for the Human Right of freedom of religion. Its focus on the relationships between governments and religions reveals the relative political power of both. Religions are vital to societies. They give people a way to express their responses to the divine impulse. They form the basis for social order and morality. Since 1948 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was approved by the United Nations, a majority of the nations of the world have approved it. The question presented by this book is, how well do the nations respect the right in practice? While a majority of the governments do respect the freedom of religion, some restrict the right of people to practice their religion through laws and administrative practices. Moreover, there are times when inter-religious rivalries get in the way of free expression of religion and lead to conflicts. Sometimes a benign religion comes to be used by militants who badly distort its message. Some religions become seekers after power, either with respect to each other or with respect to their governments. In at least one case, religion and government are one. The book is different from others that discuss freedom of religion in that it classifies 191 countries according to their governments’ respect for freedom of religion in practice, using U.S. State Department reports and other sources. The focus of the book is political, not theological.

About the Author

Elizabeth Warren is a retired college professor of Political Science who continues to fi nd the study of government exciting. Of particular interest today are the changes that are occurring in American society and their impact on our government’s policies. Warren took her graduate work fi fteen years after receiving her B.A. degree in History from Bryn Mawr College. She received her Master’s degree from the University of Kansas and concluded her work for the doctorate in Political Science at the University of Nebraska. She also went into active politics in local government, serving as a Trustee and then Mayor of the Village of Glencoe, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She has published books on subjects as disparate as the impact of the Gautreaux v Chicago Housing Authority court decision and the relationships between religion and politics. She also wrote a biography of a 19th Century Quaker who was a leader in the development of the Society of Friends in the Midwest. Warren’s husband was a Sears executive, and she has four grown daughters.