Release date: April 18, 2006

Templeton Grant Awarded to Emory's Center for Study of Law and Religion

Philip L. Reynolds, Aquinas Professor of Historical Theology at Emory, will direct and coordinate the project.

Contact: April L. Bogle: 404-712-8713 or abogle@law.emory.edu
Contact: Elaine Justice: 404-727-0643 or elaine.justice@emory.edu

The John Templeton Foundation has awarded a grant of $750,000 to Emory University's Center for the Study of Law and Religion (CSLR) for research on the ancient ideal of "the pursuit of happiness." The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love (IRUL) at Case Western Reserve University collaborated with the CSLR to make the project possible.

Titled "The Pursuit of Happiness: Scientific, Theological and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Love of God, Neighbor and Self," the research project begins in the fall of 2006 and will run five years with a total budget of $1.5 million. It will analyze the concept of "the pursuit of happiness" using the methods and insights of science, theology, ethics, law, politics and the behavioral sciences. Eighteen distinguished scholars from a variety of specialties will collaborate as senior fellows, and each will be expected to write a book or a series of articles. The fellows also will distill their work into popular articles and deliver public lectures on the Emory campus.

The project is unusual in its emphasis and methodology. The senior fellows will consider happiness at the intersection of two axes. One axis is the relationship between personal fulfillment or wellbeing and unselfish love. The other axis is the relationship between the teachings of religious traditions and the findings of science.

'Pursuit of Happiness' Participants

Project architects, who will continue to oversee and participate in it, are John Witte Jr., Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law and Ethics at Emory and CSLR director; Stephen G. Post, president of IRUL and a professor in the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University; and Timothy P. Jackson, associate professor of Christian ethics at Emory. Philip L. Reynolds, Aquinas Professor of Historical Theology at Emory, will direct and coordinate the project. Several other distinguished scholars, including Michael J. Perry, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory, and Michael E. McCullough, associate professor of psychology and adjunct professor of religion at the University of Miami, will serve as advisors. Jackson, Reynolds and Perry are CSLR senior fellows.

"Most famously formulated in the American Declaration of Independence, this ancient and enduring Western ideal is grounded in various Hebrew, classical, Christian and Enlightenment sources," says Witte. "The project will retrieve some of the rich traditional teachings captured in this ideal and reconstruct them for our day in light of the new findings of the social sciences and the new liberties of democratic constitutionalism."

Post explains that religious traditions, now with the support of a growing number of significant studies, exhort people to pursue their own happiness as a by-product of loving God and neighbor. Yet in today's industrial nations, where people are on the whole much better off materially than were their parents and grandparents, research has shown that people's estimation of their own happiness is lower than it was 50 years ago.

"What have we lost, and how can this project help clarify an emerging image of human fulfillment that is both deeply unselfish and deeply happy? This project has tremendous cultural implications, and pertains to all aspects of life, from marriage and how we raise our children, to civic engagement and education, to law and political life, to global love for a shared humanity," says Post.

Reynolds adds, "My own scholarly approach to happiness begins with the theologian Thomas Aquinas, for whom happiness was the perfection of human nature and the necessary motive for all human action. But the topic has wonderful potential for bringing into conversation diverse approaches across all periods, religious traditions and academic disciplines, including both the arts and the sciences."

CSLR and John Templeton Foundation

The Center for the Study of Law and Religion is home to world class scholars and forums on the religious foundations of law, politics, and society. It offers expertise on how the teachings and practices of Christianity, Judaism and Islam have shaped and continue to transform the fundamental ideas and institutions of our public and private lives. The scholarship of CSLR faculty provides the latest perspectives, while its conferences and public forums foster reasoned and robust public debate.

The mission of the John Templeton Foundation is to pursue new insights at the boundary between theology and science through a rigorous, open-minded and empirically focused methodology, drawing together talented representatives from a wide spectrum of fields of expertise.

Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. For more than a decade Emory has been named one of the country's top 25 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, the state's largest and most comprehensive health care system.

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