Law and Religion in the 21st Century: Religion between States and Religious Communities

Abstract

This wide-ranging volume offers a collection of thirty essays on the timely and topical issue of state and religion relations in an age of religious revival. The volume is divided into three main parts. The first, “Patterns of Law and Religion,” includes several insightful survey essays that, taken together, provide a useful mapping of the dynamics of change and continuity in the organization of state and religion relations. These essays span a variety of countries, from South Africa (a somewhat unusual choice for the first essay in a volume on religion) to India, Japan, and the United States (the most comprehensive chapter in the collection that includes concise analysis of free exercise protection at the state level). This section also includes a fascinating chapter on the challenges of state and religion in the seldom explored West African countries. The way in which these states have grappled with colonial legal heritage, ethnic diversity, religious resurgence, and struggles over sources of legal authority are all dealt with in this chapter. Concluding this section is an illuminating comparative essay on current challenges of law and religion in Latin America, a continent that has been witnessing profound democratization and emerging religious pluralism alongside lingering Catholic dominance. The general mode of inquiry in this section is descriptive or taxonomical, with occasional dialogue with pertinent social and political developments.