Special Issue on ‘Disentangling the Relationship between Religion and Law’

‘Religion remains undefined as a matter of international law’, claimed T Jeremy Gunn in 2003. Yet, despite the absence of a commonly agreed definition, the right to freedom of religion or belief is contained in numerous international, regional, and domestic legal provisions and intersects with various areas of law. In its Article 2, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) lists religion as an impermissible ground of distinction in the entitlement to human rights, meaning that religion cannot be used to prevent the entitlement of individuals to all the rights and freedoms set forth in the Declaration. Article 18 of the UDHR provides that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, which includes the freedom to change one’s religion or belief. The right comprises the freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest the religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. The freedom of religion and belief thus protects an individual’s spiritual freedom. In protecting this freedom, law engages with a person’s relationship with the transcendental.