“The Center held its Eighteenth Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, “Religious Freedom in a Pluralistic Age: Trends, Challenges, and Practices,” October 2-4, 2011. This event continued the tradition of bringing together a diverse group of figures involved in issues of law and religion and religious freedom to address trends, concerns, and best practices. Participants brought insights from their experience as members of the judiciary, government officials, NGO activists, media personalities, religious leaders, and scholars….
The first half of 2011 saw unprecedented activity at the International Center for Law and Religion Studies of the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University. Center representatives participated in some two dozen conferences, lectures, roundtables, constitution- and capacity-building endeavors, and other presentations in the United States and in fifteen countries worldwide. In addition to those reported in this newsletter were events in Utah, California, Texas, Nevada, Britain, Poland, Belgium, Austria, Serbia, Hungary, Turkey, Indonesia, and Nepal. …
At the beginning of 2011, we at the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University mark the opening of the second decade of the Center’s formal existence. This is a time of both reflection and recommitment, of both gratitude and hope. As we ponder what we have attempted to accomplish during the past decade in service to the people and the causes we hold dear, we remember and cherish associations with our friends in many lands who are likewise engaged in promoting what is to us a most fundamental human freedom: the freedom to think and to express those thoughts, the freedom to believe and to manifest beliefs, alone or in peaceful association with others, according to the dictates of…