Conversation about Religious Liberty and Discrimination

What is religious liberty? Why is it important? What should we do when claims of religious liberty clash with dignity, equality, and diversity? These questions are of the utmost political, moral, and legal importance and are also of urgent importance. On October 6, 2017, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued two controversial memoranda on this subject. The first set forth twenty key principles of religious liberty in U.S. law and provided direction to agencies, while the second instructed the Department of Justice (DOJ) on implementation of these principles in all aspects of DOJ’s litigation, in advice to other agencies, in department operations, and through its own rulemaking and interagency rule review. In this lecture, two leading scholars of religious liberty, Dr. Mark David Hall (Herbert Hoover Distinguished Professor of Politics at George Fox University) and Dr. Steven Green (Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Religion, Law & Democracy at Willamette University), have a conversation about religious liberty and discrimination as a way to think through these questions and possible responses to them.