Religion and State - From Separation to Cooperation?

Religion is increasingly a social and political factor in post-modern societies nowadays and the question of the role of religion in the public sphere is more and more brought to the fore: a challenge to legal philosophers. Should religion be only a private affair, or should the public dimension of religion be more acknowledged? Do we have to interpret the freedom of religion and the separation of church and state in a strict (laicist) sense, or do we have to allow for a more benevolent relation between religion and the state? This collection of essays explores these questions in various and new ways.