Internationalization and Re-Confessionalization

This volume explores the interaction between law and religion in the Nordic region and Germany in the post-World War II period. It examines how religion has been conceptualized and managed within secular law and pays particular attention to the growing influence of international law on the regulation of majority and minorty religion. The volume investigates different ways of understanding the secularity of law, and it analyzes the relationship between conceptions of secularity within law and theology in the region. Finally, it also discusses renegotiations of theological positions with regard to the law of the land and tendencies towards re-confessionalization of law governing religion.

Author Biography

Pamela Slotte is Professor of Religion and Law at Åbo Akademi University and Vice-Director of the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity and European Narratives at the University of Helsinki. She is PI in the HERA funded interdisciplinary comparative research project; Protestant Legacies in Nordic Law: Uses of the Past in the Construction of Secularity of Law. Recent publications include: Christianity and International Law: An Introduction (co-editor, Cambride University Press 2021), Rights at the Margins: Historical, Legal and Philosophical Perspectives (co-editor, Brill 2020), Juridification of Religion? (co-author, Brill 2017), Revisiting the Origins of Human Rights (co-editor, Cambridge University Press 2015). Niels Henrik Gregersen was Research Professor in Theology and Science at Aarhus University 2000-2004, and is since 2004 Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Copenhagen. He was co-PI of the Excellence Center of Naturalism and Christian Semantics 2007-2013, co-PI of the Excellence Program Changing Disasters 2013-2016, and PI of the Danish Reformation Project 2014-2017, all at the University of Copenhagen. In science-and-religion, he is known for his work on theologies of self-organization and complexity theory, and in systematic theology for developing the concept of “deep incarnation” in context of an evolutionary creation theology. Helge Arsheim is Research Editor at the Scandinavian University Press and researcher at the University of Oslo. He specializes in the relationship between law and religion, with a particular emphasis on transnational flows of laws on religion and the rise of “religion law” as an independent legal field. He is the author of Making Religion and Human Rights at the United Nations (De Gruyter, 2018)