Religious Freedom : Its Confirmation and Violation During the 20th and 21st Centuries

Restrictions with respect to religious freedom have been in place in authoritarian states for a number of years. We can observe a new period of co-operation between authoritarian states and “state” churches. Some churches have assumed a clearly political position, even in belligerent conflicts, by justifying wars, criminalizing their religious competitors and, thereby, exploiting the Christian Gospel for non-Christian purposes. In this volume, scholars from Europe and North America discuss the core objective of religious freedom in the West and East, seeking measures to encourage religions to act and interact, independent of deliberate political stances—to maintain their distance from territorial governments and to strengthen the principle of religious freedom and, thereby, their own denomination as well.