ABSTRACT
This chapter approaches the issue by means of a succinct inquiry into the question of to what extent religious communities are, can, and should be exempt from general law. In elaborating on this issue, the chapter offers an account of two concrete examples of how governance through law in matters of faith is being conceptualized and approached: in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, a majority church, is currently revisiting its legal relations to the State and making decisions on how its activities ought to be regulated in law in the future. Within the European human rights system, the matters at stake are conceptualized in terms of collective religious autonomy or church autonomy, and its scope and limits, rather than explicitly in terms of 'ministerial exceptions'.
