The IIRF Webinars on religious freedom issues will feature special guests and are expected to happen every two months. Stay tuned to our newsletter and media for the next webinar!
The IIRF held its first webinar of the year on Wednesday, March 13, on the topic of “Challenges of religious communities in European secular states and beyond” featuring the guest editors of the latest issue of the International Journal for Religious Freedom. Prof. Dr. Jelle Creemers is the Director of the Institute for the Study of Freedom of Religion or Belief (ISFORB) and Dr. Tatiana Kopaleishvili is the Coordinator of ISFORB. They both come from the Department of Religious Studies and Missiology at ETF, Leuven, Belgium. You can watch the recording of the webinar here.
Their presentation introduced the challenges of religious communities in European secular states. The authors drew from academic disciplines such as law, history, theology, and sociology, and paid attention to specific communities in particular countries or regions that strive for acceptance and desire to be respected in their religious particularity.
Dr. Jelle Creemers shared with the audience a review of one of the articles in the journal, the contribution of Dr. Jonathan Fox (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan) on “How secular and religiously free are Europe’s “secular” states?”. The author uses data from the Religion and State (RAS) project to examine the extent to which 43 European states are both secular and religiously free.
This study demonstrates that the separation of religion and state in practice (rather than in theory) and full freedom of religion or belief are the exception rather than the rule in Europe. Fox’s article shows a pattern that states which declare separation of religion and state also tends toward restricting religion.
The author affirms that anti-religious, secular ideologies are among the reasons for this, but it is unlikely that this is the only motivation. However, it is likely that secularism combines limitations on freedom of religion or belief with a tendency to exacerbate restrictions caused by other motivations.
You can read this and more articles in the International Journal for Religious Freedom. A recording of the webinar is available here: