Religious freedom, if it means anything at all, must mean the ability of people of all faiths and none to practice their religion, to form religious associations and perhaps, if necessary, to be exempt from some civil laws, as Sikhs are relieved of the requirement to wear motorcycle helmets. These exemptions should be offered uniformly, based upon the religious beliefs and the impact of the exemption, not on the constitutional status of the religious organization involved. Religious equality means treating all religions the same: Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists Muslims and Jews, as well as all denominations within each of them. However, religious establishment (a term that may well be essentially contestable in British constitutional law) necessarily carries privileges with it …

On Friday, 11 November, 2011, Nuffield College hosted a panel of scholars in the field of American politics, identity, and race, to discuss the September 2011 publication of Still a House Divided: Race and Politics in Obama’s America by Desmond S. King and Rogers M. Smith. The dialogue that ensued engaged the authors with a series of questions surrounding the book’s central thesis: despite the real progress in racial equality achieved by the 1960s civil rights legislation, the United States political institution has been caught in between two modes of conceptualizing, and enacting policy, about race— both of which have failed to close the tremendous gap in racial disparities in social and economic welfare that are a legacy of American …

Pardon the self-promotion: I reviewed a new book on Reinhold Niebuhr, a theologian and realist political thinker during the Cold War, in last week’s Economist. Niebuhr died in the 1970’s but both Democrats and Republicans lean on his advice (even if misread) to guide their modern foreign policy views. Here is a snippet from my review of the book, Why Niebuhr Now?, by John Patrick Diggins, the late American intellectual historian. AFTER years in the doldrums, Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologian, is enjoying a comeback. Although Niebuhr died in 1971, he is nowadays often name-dropped in opinion columns and highbrow chat as the ideal mind to help guide 21st-century political leaders through the ups and downs of world affairs. It …