Beyond the Sacred Text: Examining the Confusion, Conflicts and Complications at the Intersection of Religion and Law in Zimbabwe
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
line 112: there are to times a 'opening' bracket
line 114: there are to times a 'opening' bracket
lines 155-64: the text quoted should be marked with a different indent
Author Response
Corrections indicated in the uploaded document
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Beyond the Sacred Text
The article, “Beyond the Sacred Text,” offers an interesting discussion about
the relationship between the law and religion. But as I read and reread the article, I
kept asking, where does the author mention the Zimbabwean Constitution, which is
the law of the land, and certain State’s legal statutes. What is their relationship to
African religions, as defined in the Constitution and in society’s legal statutes? Most
Constitutions in African countries and in the Western world include local religious
customs and practices. The idea that we should not kill or murder is in most
religious practices and in the Constitution. Since African societies have many
religions, which have different and at times contradictory practices, the Law has to
speak. In many African societies you had the religious practice of female mutilation,
which has been outlawed by the various countries’ Constitutions and legal statutes.
You cannot have religions saying it is still okay to practice female mutilation. More
importantly, Religions tend to deal with the spirit, and the laws of the Constitution
deal with maintaining a civil society, including patriarchy, gender inequality,
marriage, rape, murder, adultery, civil disputes, and wife abuse. The author of the
article needs to first establish the relationship between the law and religion, as it is
constituted in the Zimbabwean Constitution and in a set of legal statutes. And if
there are cultural practices and customs that clash with the law, you work to change
the law. But you cannot have fifteen different Christian and indigenous African
religions making their own laws about marriage, rape, and murder, etc. This has
been the problem in the West with the Catholic Church and priests putting their
hands on young boys. At some point the Law had to step in and stop the Church
from offering its brand of justice to the priest.
Again, the author needs to foreground the relationship between the Zimbabwean
Constitution and the society’s legal statutes and religious practices. Then discuss the
conflict between the two within the context of the Constitution and the society’s
legal statutes.
in the document sent to the editor
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Corrections indicated in the uploaded document
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The articles describes the problem among public law and religion within the Zimbabwean context. It exposes several examples and contextualizes it in the discussion among different believers.
There are some omissions of references in lines 103, 105, 233, .
In lines 137-147 the quote is not clearly marked as such.
In lines 177-179 and other places there are problems with the size of the letters.
In line 323 the author uses 'creäte' instead of 'create'.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Kindly see the attached response
Reviewer 2 Report
I have provided many comments throughout the attached essay. Some things to note:
- There are a few minor typos that need cleaning up.
- The primary issue I have with this paper is that it does not provide a compelling argument. There are 3 areas of law randomly chosen and not analyzed very carefully plus an anecdotal bible study conversation that is relied on too heavily.
- I do not understand the title and its correlation to the essay
- Finally, the sources utilized (primarily Moon and Berman) feel very disconnected from the Zimbabwean case studies. The paper would be greatly improved if it were more thoroughly rooted in the Zimbabwean context.
See the attached file for extensive notes.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Kindly see the attached.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
This article remains far from publishable and the changes do not constitute major revision. It still feels too heavily reliant upon anecdotal evidence (if, as you state more clearly in the cover letter, you think this whatsapp conversation was not anecdotal but representative, you need to demonstrate this...also you need to explain how you are using this - did you receive permissions? is it public? etc.).
