Bøker av Jr. Witte

This book traces the religious sources and dimensions of human rights and the complex interaction of human rights and religious freedom norms historically and today. It also answers various modern critics who see human rights as a betrayal of Christianity and religious freedom as a betrayal of human rights.

This book defends the fundamental place of the marital family in modern liberal societies. It encourages churches, states, and other social institutions to collaborate in promoting the integration of sex, marriage, and family life. It defends the rights of women and children against Christian critics, and resists modern liberal efforts to abolish, privatize, or fracture the marital family.

John Witte, Jr documents the historical arguments for monogamy over polygamy in the West from antiquity until today. Weighing traditional arguments alongside modern claims that anti-polygamy laws violate personal and religious freedom, Witte finds that the case against polygamy remains compelling.

Witte analyzes the shifting laws and logics of illegitimacy in the Western tradition offering an incisive critique of this historical doctrine and its renewed expression among neo-conservatives in church and state. Illegitimacy doctrine, he argues, misinterprets several biblical texts and disregards cardinal Christian teachings of individual accountability and Christian community.

John Calvin developed arresting new teachings on rights and liberties, church and state that shaped the law of early modern Protestant lands. A number of basic ideas of religious and political rights, social and confessional pluralism, federalism and social contract owe a great deal to early modern Calvinism.

The Lutheran Reformation brought about immense and far-reaching change in the structures of both church and state. This book investigates the relationship between the law and religious ideology in Luther's Germany, showing how they developed in response to the momentum of Lutheran teachings and influence.

Spanning thousands of years, this collection brings together writings and teachings about sex, marriage, and family from the Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Confucian, and Buddhist traditions. It reveals the similarities and differences among the teachings of each tradition and the development of their ideas and practices over time. Selections address a range of subjects, including sexuality and sexual pleasure, the meaning and purpose of marriage, the role of betrothal, the status of women, the place of romance, divorce, celibacy, and sexual deviance. Drawn from a variety of genres, including ritual, legal, theological, poetic, and mythological texts, the chapters present and analyze a diverse range of sources, such as the Zohar on conjugal manners, a contemporary Episcopalian liturgy for same-sex unions, Qur'anic passages on the equality of the sexes, the Ka-masu-tra on husbands, wives, and lovers, Buddhist writings on celibacy, and Confucian teachings on filial piety.