Essays on Religion and Human Rights

David Little is a Research Fellow at the Berkley Center of Religion, Peace, and International Affairs, Georgetown University, Washington DC. He retired in 2009 as Professor of the Practice in Religion, Ethnicity, and International Conflict at Harvard Divinity School and as an associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, Massachusetts. He was a member of the US State Department Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad from 1996 to 1998.

Acknowledgments; Foreword John Kelsay; Introduction; Part I. In Defense of Rights: 1. Ground to stand on; 2. Critical reflections on The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History by Samuel Moyn; Part II. Religion and Rights: 3. Religion, human rights, and the secular state; 4. Religion, human rights, and public reason: protecting the freedom of religion or belief; 5. Rethinking tolerance: a human rights approach; 6. A bang or a whimper?: Assessing some recent challenges to religious freedom in the United States; 7. Religion and human rights: a personal testament; Part III. Religion and the History of Rights: 8. Religion, peace, and the origins of nationalism; 9. Roger Williams and the Puritan background of the establishment clause; Part IV. Public Policy and the Restraint of Force: 10. Terrorism, public emergency, and international order; 11. The academic in times of war; 12. Obama and Niebuhr: religion and American foreign policy; Afterword: ethics, religion, and human consciousness: further reflections on a 'two-tiered' or 'bifocal' approach to justification; Appendix. Ethics and scholarship; Index.