| NEWS |
| Overview: POS 4931, Religion and
Public Policy, is intended to equip intelligent citizens and future
public managers with an understanding of the role of religion in
American public policy. The course is motivated by two major concerns.
First, many conflicts between religious organizations and the state
could be avoided if public managers understood what the law allows and
disallows regarding religion in the public square. Second, many
otherwise well-informed citizens are confused or unaware about the role
played by religion in American public policy. Accordingly, the course
is organized to remedy these problems. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Grading: Your course grade will be based
on two examinations (35% each), which will include both objective and
essay questions, and a research paper (30%). The midterm examination is
on Thursday, October 11th and the final, which is not cumulative, is
scheduled on Tuesday, December 4th (at the usual class time and place). If necessary, exam scores will be scaled by
adding a constant number to raise the class average. There will be
extra credit opportunities for (a) attending specified public
lectures/events outside of class (if available) and (b) reporting
broken links on the web page for the course (the first person to report
a broken link by email gets an additional point on the next exam up to
a maximum of 3).For students on
the borderline between two grades, I reserve the right to factor in
outstanding class participation. I sometimes adjust the final grading
scale but start with the following norms:
Based on long experience and scientific research, the best way to achieve a high grade is to attend class regularly and keep up with the reading. If you have questions, come and see me during office hours or contact me via email or phone. I will be happy to make suitable accommodations for students who provide documentation of a disability from the UF Disability Resource Center. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Readings: Class sessions will offer a mix of lecture, discussion, and videos. I also plan to schedule some guest speakers. Reading assignments will be taken from the following paperback books:  Steven
V.
Monsma & J. Christopher Soper
The Challenge of Pluralism: Church &
State in Five Democracies (2nd edition)
Lanham,
MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2009
 Ronald B.
Flowers
That Godless Court? Supreme Court Decisions on Church-State Relations (2nd edition) Louisville, KY: WJKP, 2005  Paul
A.
Djupe & Laura R. Olson, editors
Religious Interests in Community Conflict: Beyond the Culture Wars Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007 
Rebecca
Sager
Faith, Politics and Power: The Politics of Faith-Based Initiatives New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In addition, you will be required to read a
number of online articles from academic journals and other
sources. If you're logged onto the UF network, these
articles are accessible simply by clicking on the links. But if
you're not on the UF network, you need to try one of two avenues. The
easiest is to go to the UF Libraries page and sign in through the UF proxy. You will then
have to go the library's home page, search for the journal, find the
right issue and article, and download it. That page also provides a
link to the UF
VPN tunnel which is slightly more complicated to install and
operate but much less restrictive than the proxy. (If you've never used
this before, I'd recommend going to the Help Desk in the Hub 132 where
they will install it for you.) Once you're connected via VPN, each of
the links should work just as if you were directly logged into the UF
network. Based on previous experience, I strongly recommend that you
download all the assigned readings at once so you don't depend on
uncertain web access when you need a resource. The links to other course material are here. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Research Paper:
Your research paper will focus on the role of religion in some public
(meaning governmental) issue in the United States. You may select an
issue or concern at any level of government (local, state, national or
involving American foreign policy). You could pick something as broad,
say, as the role of religion in debates over health care reform (see
Morone in the schedule below) or note the attention given to questions
about whether abortion should be covered) or as narrow as the conflict
over abstinence education in a particular Florida school district. The
paper should explain this issue and its religious dimension in a manner
similar to the case studies in the Djupe and Olson volume. You will
need to describe the actors involved in the issue or controversy, the
legal and constitutional aspects of it, and the outcome or status of
the issue today. In assessing papers, I also look for the way in which
you have used relevant concepts discussed in the class--things like
social movements or morality politics. You're encouraged to use many
different kinds of sources BUT
not to rely exclusively on web sources and to make sure any web sources
are credible. Wikipedia
is
not credible so don't cite it. In grading papers, I
give principal weight to five factors:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Schedule: The following is my best estimate of the daily schedule. A few items, like test dates, are fixed stone but others are variable. I subscribe to the metaphor of a class as a jazz composition: "There is the basic melody that you work with. It is defined by the syllabus. But there is also a considerable measure of improvision against that disciplining background" (Source: Mark Edmundson, "The Trouble with Online Education," New York Times, 19 July 2012). I'll post changes and announce them as I make them. |