Religion In The Public Sphere A Comparative Analysis Of German Israeli American And International Law

How closely connected should church and state be? May a state endorse the role and meaning of religion at all? Can it treat distinct religious groups differently? This book addresses these questions and more through a portrayal and comparison of the legal systems of Germany, Israel, France, and the United States. This thought-provoking book brings the often opposing demands of religious and secular freedoms into clear focus.

How closely connected should church and state be? May a state endorse the role and meaning of religion at all? Can it treat distinct religious groups differently? This book addresses these questions and more through a portrayal and comparison of the legal systems of Germany, Israel, France, and the United States. This thought-provoking book brings the often opposing demands of religious and secular freedoms into clear focus.

The three Abrahamic faiths have dominated religious conversations for millennia but the relations between state and religion are in a constant state of flux. This relationship may be configured in a number of ways. Religious norms may be enforced by the state as part of a regime of personal law or, conversely, religious norms may be formally relegated to the private sphere but can be brought into the legal realm through the private acts of individuals. Enhanced recognition of religious tribunals or religious doctrines by civil courts may create a hybrid of these two models. One of the major issues in the reconciliation of changing civic ideals with religious tenets is gender equality, and this is an ongoing challenge in both domestic and international affairs. Examining this conflict within the context of a range of issues including marriage and divorce, violence against women and children, and women’s political participation, this collection brings together a discussion of the Abrahamic religions to examine the role of religion in the struggle for women’s equality around the world. The book encompasses both theory and practical examples of how law can be used to negotiate between claims for gender equality and the right to religion. It engages with international and regional human rights norms and also national considerations within countries. This book will be of great relevance to scholars and policy makers with an interest in law and religion, gender studies and human rights law.

This book explores the challenge of crafting a democratic constitution under conditions of deep disagreement over a state's religious or secular identity.

While French laïcité is often considered something fixed, its daily deployment is rather messy. What might we learn if we study the governance of religion from a dynamic bottom-up perspective? Using an ethnographic approach, this book examines everyday secularism in the making. How do city actors understand, frame and govern religious diversity? Which local factors play a role in those processes? In Urban Secularism: Negotiating Religious Diversity in Europe, Julia Martínez-Ariño brings the reader closer to the entrails of laïcité. She provides detailed accounts of the ways religious groups, city officials, municipal employees, secularist actors and other civil-society organisations negotiate concrete public expressions of religion. Drawing on rich empirical material, the book demonstrates that urban actors draw and (re-)produce dichotomies of inclusion and exclusion, and challenge static conceptions of laïcité and the nation. Illustrating how urban, national and international contexts interact with one another, the book provides researchers with a deeper understanding of the multilevel governance of religious diversity.

This revised and updated casebook comprehensively compares the U.S. legal approach to problems of inequality and discrimination with the approaches of a variety of other legal systems around the world.

This volume focuses on issues that have only recently come to the forefront of the discipline such as freedom from religion, ordination of homosexuals, apostasy, security and fundamentalism, issues that are linked to the common themes of secularism and globalization. Although these subjects are not new to the academic debate, they have become prominent in law and religion circles as a result of recent and rapid changes in society. The essays in this volume present multiple points of view, facilitate scholars in understanding this evolving discipline and act as a stimulus for further research.This collection gives the reader a sense of the key topics and current debates in law and religion and is of interest to law, politics, human rights, and religion scholars.

The global movement of culture and religion has brought about a serious challenge to traditional constitutional secularism. This challenge comes in the form of a political and institutional struggle against secular constitutionalism, and a two pronged assault on the very legitimacy and viability of the concept. On the one hand, constitutional secularism has been attacked as inherently hostile rather than neutral toward religion; and, on the other hand, constitutional secularism has been criticized as inevitably favouring one religion (or set of religions) over others. The contributors to this book come from a variety of different disciplines including law, anthropology, history, philosophy and political theory. They provide accounts of, and explanations for, present predicaments; critiques of contemporary institutional, political and cultural arrangements, justifications and practices; and suggestions with a view to overcoming or circumventing several of the seemingly intractable or insurmountable current controversies and deadlocks. The book is separated in to five parts. Part I provides theoretical perspectives on the present day conflicts between secularism and religion. Part II focuses on the relationship between religion, secularism and the public sphere. Part III examines the nexus between religion, secularism and women's equality. Part IV concentrates on religious perspectives on constraints on, and accommodations of, religion within the precincts of the liberal state. Finally, Part V zeroes in on conflicts between religion and secularism in specific contexts, namely education and freedom of speech.

This book examines in detail both historical and current legal concepts of ‘religious cultural heritage’ within the context of the European continent. The latter group is primarily based on the variety of sacred cultural elements emanating from the different religious traditions of the peoples of Europe, which are deemed worthy of protection and preservation due to their outstanding value, in terms of their social, cultural and religious significance. In view of this, the study provides evidence of the European States’ active involvement with their sacred/cultural treasures, on the basis of the political and legal foundations of neutrality and pluralism. Furthermore, the book analyzes all relevant international legislative instruments (i.e. the plethora of EU, EC and UNESCO norms), as well as all major European legislative patterns, in light of their significance for the aforementioned aspects of pluralism and neutrality. The interdisciplinary references listed at the end of each chapter provide an additional incentive for further reading on the subject matter. The most important finding to emerge from the study is that there is a shared legal ethos in Europe that imposes a duty of appropriate care concerning the vast variety of sacred cultural goods and the religious cultural heritage in general, as an invaluable repository of European cultural capital. It also considers the sui generis nature of this capital: like any other type of asset, it may deteriorate or fade over time, necessitating investment in its preservation or refurbishment; nevertheless, like no other, this particular capital maintains a distinct cultural value, as it contains an additional characteristic of ‘sacredness’ expressed in the form of its ‘religious character,’ the latter being analyzed as a triptych of religious memory, religious aesthetics and religious beliefs.

Religion is a prominent legal force despite the premise constructed and promoted by Western constitutionalism that it must be separated from the State in democracies. Education constitutes an area of human life that leaves ample scope for the expression of religious identity and shapes the citizens of the future. It is also the place of origin of a considerable number of normative conflicts involving religious identity that arise today in multicultural settings. The book deals with the interplay of law and religion in education through the versatility of religious law and legal pluralism, as well as religion’s possible adaptation and reconciliation with modernity, in order to consider and reflect on normative conflicts. It adopts the angle of the constitutional dimension of religion narrated in a comparative perspective and critically reflects on regulatory attempts by the State and the international community to promote new ways of living together.