ABSTRACT
The effects of globalization, the enmeshment of world-wide economies, the massive movements of population across the globe, including the growth in Europe of its non-Christian populace, have all led to a questioning of conventional understandings in the social and historical sciences, political thought, religious studies, literature, and law. The various permutations of rights in terms of relations between Church and State and of religious freedom within different Christian traditions are adumbrated in a most useful manner in Norman Doe’s contribution. The legal system of the State attained its apogee in the formulations of positivistic legal thought, procedural in nature, which made nary a claim to transcendent, revelatory or otherwise other-worldly or ultimate sources of their authority. Strong legal pluralism implies the de facto existence of alternative legal orders that effect compliance by a certain populace and exist independent of the State’s legitimizing mechanisms.
