Winnifred Sullivan, University at Buffalo Law School- “Spiritual Governance”
University at Buffalo Law School
“Spiritual Governance”
Abstract: There has been a remarkably broad embrace in the U.S. of the value of what are termed “faith-based” initiatives, at their most inclusively understood. One finds a new openness to the re-incorporation of the religious, or what is often termed, the “spiritual,” dimension of every human being across a number of fields—in the military—in health care—in education—in prisons—and even in the workplace. While to many the faith-based initiative is associated with the Bush administration, the extension of government contracting for social services to religious organizations began under the Clinton administration and has been firmly endorsed by the Obama administration. How is this being legally effected? This presentation, part of a larger project, will address the varieties of legal management of religion that this shift gives rise to—what historian Franklin Presler called “religion under bureaucracy”—or, religion under what is called by some legal scholars “soft law” or the “new governance”, horizontal regulation through a partnership between government and private regulators. While constitutional and human rights scholars engage in rights talk, the legal foot soldiers of government, the self-appointed regulators of the health and social service professions, insurance administrators, and entrepreneurial developers of standards and procedures, in partnership with private regulatory systems of various kinds, make manifold decisions about religious life that shapes and regulates it. I will sketch out some of the public/private partnerships that establish the religio-legal forms that deliver spiritual care to Americans.
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