This essay introduces the Faith-Anchored Dynamic Resilience (FADR) Model, developed inductively from personal essays written by 73 women leaders across 46 countries and six faith traditions. Rather than fitting their experiences into existing frameworks, the analysis traces recurring patterns across narratives to construct a four-layer model: a Foundation of faith, identity, and community; eight Dynamic Capacities organized around in-the-moment and long-arc resilience; Threshold Moments of high instability; and Emergent Outcomes that transform suffering into purpose. Drawing on chaos theory as a structural lens, the model reconceptualizes resilience not as recovery but as a nonlinear, faith-anchored, communally sustained process of becoming.
The study of religion and politics in Latin America has traditionally emphasized the historical dominance of the Catholic Church and the region's reputation as one heavily shaped by religion, while popular and casual observers continue to assume that Western liberal democracies set the benchmark for religious tolerance. The cross-national literature on government religion policy in the region, however, remains fragmented, heavily case-based, and lacking systematic quantitative comparison. Using the Religion and State round 4 (RAS4) dataset, this study provides a longitudinal cross-national analysis of religion-state meta-policy, government religious support (GRS), government religious discrimination (GRD), government religious regulation (GRR), and societal religious discrimination (SRD) in Latin America and the Caribbean between 1990 and 2023. We find that GRS, GRD, and SRD are generally lower than in the RAS4 Western democracies comparison set analyzed in Fox and Zellman (2025), while GRR is considerably higher. These findings invite a reassessment of common assumptions about the Catholic Church's contemporary institutional grip on the state and suggest that leveling the religious playing field in a region with a historically fused Catholic-state inheritance has required more assertive state regulation of the majority religion than in Western contexts with greater institutional religious diversity.
Armed non-state groups that frame grievances in Islamic terms now govern large territories, and military campaigns have often failed or backfired as their reach expands. Over half of intrastate wars involve movements seeking Islamic forms of statecraft, yet such conflicts are less amenable to international mediation. Drawing on cases from Mali and Syria, this paper shows how Islamic jurists interpret foundational texts (Qur'an and Prophetic traditions) to endorse, legitimize, or challenge executive leaders' decisions-revealing enduring tension between judicial and political authority. Considering the 2025 developments in Syria with regional geopolitical repercussions, understanding the internal dynamics among Islamic jurists and their role is vital for mediators and for ethically grounded, innovative engagement strategies in protracted conflict settings.
Minority religions, particularly those pejoratively referred to as cults, have suffered discrimination throughout history. This persists in contemporary society, including Western democracies, and is manifested in a wide variety of ways, with states throughout the world passing and/or applying discriminatory laws. Sometimes just labelling a movement as a cult allows it to be treated not as a religion, entitled to the rights defined by international declarations, but as a criminal organization. Other acts of discrimination are more subtle, such as requiring proof of hundreds or even thousands of national members before a new religion can register as a recognized religion.
Tapping into W. Cole Durham, Jr.'s prolific contributions to our understanding of the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief (FoRB), this article examines the complex interplay between the rights of religious nonstate actors (NSAs) and their accountability obligations under international norms. Using the Russian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (ROC) and its support for Russia's aggression in Ukraine as a case study, the article elaborates that state obligations to protect FoRB cannot come at the expense of shielding religious NSAs from responsibility for actions that undermine fundamental rights or fuel armed conflict. To address the need for more precise balancing, the article explores pathways for religious NSA accountability under international human rights law and international criminal law, emphasizing the legitimacy of proportionate and non-discriminatory limitations on FoRB.
The essay elaborates on W. Cole Durham, Jr.'s academic work in the context of the democratization in Central and Eastern Europe countries started (and yet not finished) after the collapse of the Soviet system. Durham's deep interest in ambiguous interplays of religion, constitutional identity, and politics in the region provided an important part of the empirical basis of his "loop" concept-a powerful theoretical explanation of links between religious freedom and religious identification of the state. Beyond that Durham's tireless efforts to educate on and advocate for religious freedom have helped to build law and religion as an academic field in the region.
Brett G. Scharffs reflects on his nearly 30 years as "junior partner" to W. Cole Durham, Jr. in their work as co-teachers of law and religion seminars at Brigham Young University (BYU) Law School; as leaders of BYU's International Center for Law and Religion Studies, founded in 2000; as co-authors of the field-making casebook Law and Religion: National, International, and Comparative Perspectives (3rd ed. forthcoming); as partners in developing law and religion courses and certificate training programs on religion and the rule of law throughout the world; as supporters of law and religion scholarship in Asia and elsewhere; and as president and board member, respectively, of the G20 Interfaith Forum (IF20).
The essay elaborates on W. Cole Durham, Jr.'s role as a long-term leading academic and expert in the field of religious freedom. Durham has played a key role helping countries in transition from Southern Asia to the Middle East to Eastern Europe in drafting constitutions that robustly protect freedom of religion, conscience, and belief. The International Center for Law and Religion Studies has set up the highest standard of academic integrity, commitment to excellence, and promotion of religious freedom for all. This has made Cole Durham a founding father of international religious freedom.
This study tests W. Cole Durham, Jr.'s argument that "strong positive and strong negative identification of church and state correlate with low levels of religious freedom" using new data from the Religion and State dataset round 4 (RAS4) focusing on sub-Sharan Africa and the post-Communist East European and Central Asia (PCEECA) region. We find that governmental discrimination against religious minorities as well as government restrictions and regulation of the majority religion in these regions follow the predicted pattern. However, societal discrimination is low in states where governments are hostile to religion and rise as they move along the spectrum toward governments which more strongly support religion.
This article adopts a comparative analytical framework inspired by W. Cole Durham, Jr. to examine religious freedom through the lenses of religion-state relations and religious pluralism. Using primary data from a 2021-2022 cross-national survey of 1,317 university students in Italy and Croatia, it explores how varying degrees of religion-state identification influence support for freedom of and from religion. The findings indicate that both religious pluralism and state neutrality are strong predictors of support for religious freedom. In contrast, extreme forms of religion-state identification, particularly positive identification, produce more complex and inconsistent effects on attitudes toward religious freedom.
Orthodox Christians have long been wary about the modern regime of human rights, given its common association with liberalism, libertinism, and individualism; its insistence on separating church and state, if not secularizing society altogether; its disastrous effects on post-Soviet Russia; and its growing attacks on majority and minority religions alike. His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, however, has recently encouraged his followers to see that rights and liberties are God's gifts to humanity. Orthodox theologies of conversion and theosis, symphonia and society, church and state, sacrifice and martyrdom, silence and love have much to offer to modern human rights around the world. This essay is dedicated to Cole Durham in gratitude for his long friendship and leadership in the field of law, religion, and human rights.
