Religious Freedom in a Changing World, co-edited by IIRF international director Dennis Petri along with Volker Kauder and Carsten Polanz, brings together insightful analyses by 14 of the world’s top experts on religious freedom.
The chapters in this volume derive from a symposium convened at the FTH Giessen School of Theology, Germany in February 2025. Among the distinguished contributors are Heiner Bielefeldt, former UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief; IIRF co-founders and prominent scholars Thomas Schirrmacher (also former World Evangelical Alliance general secretary) and Christof Sauer; Janet Epp Buckingham, who represents the WEA at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva; and Ronald MacMillan, known for his globally prominent research on religious freedom, and current Chairman of the Board of the IIRF.
The book combines analyses of foundational issues in religious freedom advocacy with examinations of specific cases. Among the key foundational issues, Petri discusses challenges in monitoring and assessing religious freedom violations; Sauer and Werner Nel consider the multiple and often conflicting understandings of religious persecution; and Buckingham describes how a secular state’s understanding of “neutrality” can restrict religious freedom.
Issues related to Islam (including both Islamic-majority societies and those where Muslims constitute a minority) receive attention from Carsten Polanz and Christine Schirrmacher. Meiken Buchholz covers the tension between patriotism and religious freedom in China, while Ronald MacMillan and Thomas Muller cover the impact of growing Hindu nationalism on Christians in India.
The volume is bilingual, with some chapters in German and others in English. As a bilingual publication rooted in the German-speaking academic tradition, it makes a unique contribution to the German-speaking world by bringing together global scholarship on religious freedom that is otherwise largely inaccessible to this audience. However, since it is available in electronic form, readers can readily access the full volume regardless of their preferred language.
“Guaranteeing religious freedom remains a permanent task assigned to humanity,” the editors state in their introduction. “Such an undertaking is by its nature dependent on cooperation. Responsibility for the safeguarding of religious freedom lies not only with governments or courts but also with scholars, civil society organizations and faith communities.”
The IIRF hopes that leaders from all those sectors will read and reflect deeply on these essays so as to inform their participation in advancing and preserving religious freedom. (Flyer on the book.)