'Open House' - 'Portes Ouvertes': Classrooms as Sites of Interfaith Interface
B. Berger and R. Moon, eds., Religion and the Exercise of Public Authority (2016, Hart Publishing, Forthcoming)
17 Pages Posted: 6 Jan 2016 Last revised: 9 Feb 2016
Date Written: 2016
Abstract
This paper reflects on the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Loyola High School v Quebec allowing that private Jesuit high school to teach the provincially mandated Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC) course from a perspective infused with its own faith-based identity and culture. The metaphor of an ‘open house’ is helpful because it represents a site in which public authority and religion meet. This metaphor illustrates – through an imagined open house that juxtaposes diverse institutional settings – how the encounter of religion and state changes shape across classrooms and through corridors. In other words, the classroom is added to the more classic repertory of courts and constitutions, charters and codes as focal points of legal analysis and learning. A metaphorical ‘portes ouvertes’ event invites us to observe, listen, and insert ourselves into the very places at which traditions meet (interfaith) and the ways in which students and teachers participate (interface).
Keywords: legal pluralism, law and diversity
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