Church, State, and Family

John Witte, Jr is Woodruff Professor of Law, McDonald Distinguished Professor of Religion, and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, Atlanta. He edits the Cambridge Law and Christianity Series and the Journal of Law and Religion. He has published 260 articles and 32 books, including the following titles: Law and Protestantism (Cambridge, 2002); The Reformation of Rights (Cambridge, 2008); Christianity and Law (Cambridge, 2008); The Sins of the Fathers (Cambridge, 2009); Christianity and Human Rights (Cambridge, 2010); To Have and to Hold (Cambridge, 2007); The Western Case for the Monogamy Over Polygamy (Cambridge, 2015); and Christianity and Family Law (Cambridge, 2017).

'It is hard to imagine a better researched, better balanced, more clearly argued - but also more charitable - defense of what John Witte, Jr calls the traditional 'marital family'. Witte a legal scholar of unique historical insight, here spells out clearly why a culture of 'stable monogamous marriages' harmonizes contractual, spiritual, natural, social, communicative, and economic realities - while offering special protection for women, children, and the poor of whatever gender, race, or class. It is a compelling book of landmark dimensions.' Mark A. Noll, McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus, University of Notre Dame

• Introduction; 1. The first integrative Christian theories of family life: John Chrysostom and Augustine of Hippo; 2. Marriage as an office of nature and a sacrament of the church: Thomas Aquinas and Francisco Vitoria; 3. The marital family as social estate and covenant community: Martin Luther and John Calvin; 4. The domestic market: the family as matrix of modern economics; 5. The nature of family in seventeenth-century Christian thought: Hugo Grotius and John Selde; 6. The surprising liberal defense of the traditional marital family by enlightenment liberals; 7. The multidimensional family sphere: reconstructing traditional family teachings for modern liberal societies; 8. Why suffer the children? Overcoming the modern church's opposition to children's rights; 9. Why same-sex marriage should not lead to polygamy; 10. By the power vested in whom? What place for faith-based family laws in a liberal democracy?; 11. The dangers of private ordering; Concluding reflections.