If law is anything today, it is dispirited. It lacks life, vitality, enchantment, vision. Neither law nor its practitioners sing—or even hum. My students tell me that they know this but want to hope for more. This article tries to suggest something more, which is already present in America's state constitutions if we can dare turn to hear it. It is the voice of the spirit of the laws of the land. It sings of a vision, and this article is an attempt to tell enough of the story of that vision so that you, too, may hear “an echo of the infinite, a glimpse of its unfathomable process, a hint of the universal law.”

To listen for the spirit, we can best attend to (in addition to the language of law texts) language of the spirit, language in which humankind has lived in hopes of relating to Ultimate Reality for millennia. The spirit we hope to tap is not necessarily theistic, but there is some correspondence among ideas of spirit, consciousness and God. As with the best of such language, we must speak not only of belief but also of doubt and mystery beyond necessary reason.

The claim that talmudic law is a religious legal system has long been, and continues to be, put forward by both traditional scholars of Jewish law and contemporary academic researchers.

The question of whether talmudic law is a religious legal system most certainly did not engage the Sages of the Talmud, but addressing it will help us grasp the nature of talmudic law. Furthermore, juxtaposing talmudic law to Biblical law will help us delineate the concept of religious law, and shed light on certain developments in the evolution of Jewish law.

Let us consider what this claim entails. Sometimes the assertion that a given legal system is a religious legal system merely seeks to indicate that it is part of a certain religion or was created within the framework of that religion. Such an assertion does not provide any information about the nature of the said system, just as the phrase “French law” says nothing more than that the system is used in France.

The European Court of Human Rights is currently considering several German cases on the autonomy of religious organizations or churches within secular German labor law and resulting conflict resolution issues that arise within religious communities. In the past, the European Court of Human Rights has consistently underlined the importance of church autonomy, relying on the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms Article 9 guarantees of freedom of thought, conscience and religion:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

2. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Implementing these provisions in the context of religious autonomy, the Court has critically noted:

[T]he autonomous existence of religious communities is indispensable for pluralism in a democratic society and is, thus, an issue at the very heart of the protection which Article 9 affords.… The right [of religious communities] to an autonomous existence is at the very heart of the guarantees in Article 9.

The eradication of apartheid in South Africa is a major item on the agenda of the international community. The apartheid system fundamentally threatens international peace and security. Moreover, human rights violations in South Africa indict a system of governance fundamentally incompatible with even the most limited interpretation of international law and morality under the United Nations Charter. Thus, the international community is being pressed to weave collaborative strategies to bring South Africa into compliance with contemporary international obligations and expectations.

In the international system, states and other actors commonly employ the bases of power at their disposal in logistic strategies designed to influence others to behave in ways deemed more consistent with their own interests or the common interest of mankind. The strategies invoked may be coercive or persuasive and may involve the use of military force, economic policies, diplomacy or ideology. With regard to apartheid, an increasing international consensus is emerging that the use of economic sanctions against the Republic of South Africa might best facilitate a political transformation from a racial oligarchy to a democratic state.

Those who drafted the Williamsburg Charter tell us that they did so in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. But it also seems to me no mere coincidence that the Charter's reaffirmation of religious liberty and re-examination of the role of religion in America's public life comes at the end of a decade that saw a mixing of politics and religion that troubled many of us deeply.

As the Charter itself emphasizes, religious people and religious ideas have long played a role in our public life. Those people and ideas are welcome elements of our ongoing national debate about what kind of a society we want to be. But during the Eighties, the debate about the role of religion in our public life often became uncivil and divisive and religious extremism often held sway over the voices of tolerance and moderation.

We are in the midst of a continuing debate about the role of religion in American politics and law. Advocates of a greater role for religion in public life—and I count myself among them—lament the privatization of religion and the secularization of public debate. Although some of the claims about privatization and secularization may be exaggerated, it seems undeniable that religion, despite its apparently robust private health, plays a relatively modest role in the public life of modern America. The public role that it does play, moreover, is under a hovering cloud of suspicion, with critics constantly suggesting that the separation of church and state is being threatened.

In this essay, I advance a radical proposition: that privatization and secularization are the product, in part, of religious freedom run amuck. In particular, the concept of religious freedom has evolved to include not merely legal toleration, but also a strong commitment to religious equality. This principle of religious equality supports the protection and nurturing of religious diversity in the private realm. Ironically, however, it also suggests that the diversity among religions is irrelevant in determining the proper role for religion in the public sphere, for the equality principle implies that what is right for one is right for all. On this view, whatever the proper role for religion in politics and law, it must be no different for one religion than another. This public leveling of religion, moreover, tends to ensure that the “equal” role that religions play in American public life will be modest, if not inconsequential. Even as we continue to extol its private diversity, religion has become publicly generic and thereby largely insignificant.

I count it a privilege to have been asked by you to reflect on this subject matter which is of grave importance to Christianity as it is witnessed to within the policies of South Africa and America.

The subject matter is of grave importance primarily because one's faith is “de facto” the reference point for one's political statements and actions. Therefore, the Christian faith correlated to the events in South Africa should assist us in determining whether our actions are consistent with the Christian Creeds we confess.

Let us begin with the observable fact that faith is not dead …. Faith is not dead. Faith does with the truth of God not only what Mary, the mother of our Lord, did; it also does what the shepherds did. Peter and John said to the Jewish council: “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” So, then, faith results in confession.

I am an ordinary worker who became part of the trade union movement in the early 1970's when South Africa was hit by a wave of strikes which eventually spread to the whole country. My experience of apartheid is a practical one. I never read about it in books. Instead, I am a direct product of that system.

I would like to begin by stating that trade unions in South Africa are as old as trade unions in North America. While black trade unions in South Africa were not legally recognized until 1979, black trade unionism dates as far back as 1919 when blacks were organized within the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICWU) which, at its peak, had 100,000 members. In the 1940's, many black unions existed and received guidance from the Council of Non-European Trade Unions (CNETU) which had emerged in 1941 as a coordinating body of black trade unions under progressive leadership.