In Defense of the Marital Family

John Witte, Jr., J.D. (Harvard); Dr. Theol. h.c. (Heidelberg), is Woodruff University Professor, McDonald Distinguished Professor, and Faculty Director of the Law and Religion Center at Emory University. A leading scholar of legal history, human rights, family law, and law and religion, he has delivered 350 public lectures worldwide and published 300 articles and 45 books, in 15 languages. Recent monographs include: The Western Case for Monogamy over Polygamy (Cambridge, 2015), Church, State, and Family (Cambridge 2019), The Blessings of Liberty (Cambridge, 2021), Faith, Freedom, and Family (Mohr Siebeck, 2021), and Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment (Oxford, 2022).

• ContentsPreface and AcknowledgmentsAbstractKeywordsIntroduction1 The Marital Sphere2 The Nature of the Marital Family3 It Takes a Society to Raise a Family4 The Economics of the Family5 The Communicative Dimension of the Family6 The Contractual Dimensions of the Marital Family7 The Marital Family as a Spiritual InstitutionConcluding Reflections: The Modern Marital Family in Traditional Christian and Modern Liberal PerspectivesBibliography