ABSTRACT

In the early 1890s, the French Impressionist Claude Monet composed a series of more than 30 paintings of the towering Gothic Rouen Cathedral in Normandy, France. The theme of the Fourth International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ICLARS) Conference suggests that much the same thing can be said about 'religious freedom'. And while Cathedral took advantage of changing seasons, weather, air, and light to emphasize and illuminate the many features and facets of his subject, the authors used four prepositions – of, for, from, and within – to engage and unpack the different dimensions of theirs. In other words, to consider religious freedom through the lens of 'within' is to see the incompetence and the lack of jurisdiction on the part of the state when it comes to church polity and religious affairs. The view from the 'freedom for religion' window suggests that we attend carefully to religious freedom's various and vital supports.