ABSTRACT
This section consists of a series of papers on aspects of the church-state theme in a number of different societies. Exceptions to this context include Hamid Dabashi’s analysis of religious and political authority in a religiocultural tradition (Islam), Roland Robertson’s focus on the Latin American continent and the survey by John Markoff and Daniel Regan of religion in the national constitutions of the world. The overall thrust of the papers is in the direction of enhancing our sense of variation in churchstate and religious-authority/political-authority relationships. Since some of the essays do not engage directly in comparison per se, it is necessary to indicate at this point some of the more salient issues involved in churchstate relations.
