Law and Religion in the 21st Century: Nordic Perspectives

Caspar David Friedrich's painting on the cover of this book is a metaphor: Scholarly relations between law & religion seemed to be destroyed through modernity. The book however argues for new life in the ruins.

Europeanized and globalized perspectives must be adopted to adjust existing Nordic models. However, central elements from the Nordic models can also be used for adjustment of other legal and religious systems. Also outside the Nordic countries could it be worth reflecting on the model of public religions combined with the secularity of law.

Law indeed is law, and law is secular. But how come the Nordic secularized countries still have established churches, regulated by public law? Why is a vast majority of the population members of these crunches? Why are other religious communities seen as entirely private law entities even though they are more or less public in their presence? And which impact do religious and secular norms claim on the law within and outside religious communities?

Such puzzling - and challenging - questions are in focus of this book. Nordic interdisciplinary critical scholarship suggests new ways of interpreting and explaining relations between religious and secular norms and point to possible new routes to follow in the 21st century.