Religious Freedom Project
Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs has received a $2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to support the interdisciplinary study of religious...
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AT THE CENTER
PROJECT LEADERS
Thomas Farr
Thomas F. Farr is Director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and a Visiting Associate...
Timothy Shah
Timothy Samuel Shah is Associate Director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center For Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and...
ASSOCIATE SCHOLARS
José Casanova
José Casanova is one of the world's top scholars in the sociology of religion. He is a professor at the Department of Sociology at Georgetown...
Jean Bethke Elshtain
Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she also has...
William Inboden
William Inboden is Assistant Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Distinguished Scholar at the Strauss Center for International...
David Novak
David Novak holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as Professor of the Study of Religion and Professor of Philosophy at the...
Daniel Philpott
Daniel Philpott is exploring Catholic and Protestant contributions to democracy from the years 1800-2000 for the Christianity and Freedom Project....
Mona Siddiqui
Mona Siddiqui, OBE is Professor of Islamic and Inter-religious Studies and Assistant Principal for Religion and Society at the University of...
Monica Duffy Toft
Monica Duffy Toft is Associate Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Director of the Initiative on Religion in...
Roger Trigg
Roger Trigg, of St Cross College, Oxford, is Senior Research Fellow in the Ian Ramsey Centre, University of Oxford, and a member of both the...
PROJECT STAFF
A.J. Nolte
A.J. Nolte joined the RFP at the beginning of October 2012, after two years as a research assistant at the Center for Complex Operations, National...
Kyle Vander Meulen
Kyle Vander Meulen joined the Berkley Center in January 2011. Before coming to the Center, he completed his master's studies in Divinity at the...
October 20, 2011
The Price of Freedom Denied
What happens when a government places restrictions on religious freedom? What does a society lose if religion is outlawed or persecuted? The Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs hosted sociologists Brian Grim and Roger Finke as they addressed these and other questions raised in their new book, The Price of Freedom Denied. Examining the worldwide state of religious freedom, Grim and Finke conclude that circumscribing or delimiting religious expression in the name of freedom serves neither the interests of the government nor the polity to whom they are responsible for protection. Rather than protecting citizens from religion in the public sphere, the authors find that religious repression or restriction is instead linked to persecution, radicalization, and potentially violence. The event included a response from Jose Casanova and was moderated by Eric Patterson.
Participants
José Casanova
José Casanova is one of the world's top scholars in the sociology of religion. He is a professor at the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University, and heads the Berkley Center's Program on Globalization, Religion and the Secular. He has...
Roger Finke
Roger Finke is a Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. He received his PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle. His research interests include Sociology of Religion, Organizations, Comparative...
Brian Grim
Brian J. Grim is Senior Researcher and Director of Cross-National Data at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and a principle investigator for the International Religious Demography Project at Boston University's Institute on Culture, Religion...
Eric Patterson
Eric Patterson, PhD is Senior Research Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. He also serves as Dean of the School of Government at Regent University in Virginia Beach, VA. His research and teaching focuses on...