Religion and the Law of the UK

Abstract

Religion poses challenges for a pluralistic, democratic and open society. Modern Western states are constructed as liberal democratic polities on the basis of civic rights of equal participation and voice and human rights to respect individual choices of how to live. They involve a strong (though not absolute) separation between concepts of right and the good. Historically, an important part of the point of this has been to defuse the destructive power of religious feeling when it enters the political realm – a lesson learned and outcome made attractive in Europe and the USA through the bitter experience of the Wars of Religion.