ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the assumptions that religion gives law its spirit and inspires its adherence to ritual and justice. Law gives religion its structure and encourages its devotion to order and organisation. Law and religion share such ideas as fault, obligation and covenant and such methods as ethics, rhetoric and textual interpretation. Law and religion also balance each other by counterpoising justice and mercy, rule and equity, discipline and love. The notion of religion as a benign force has been challenged in an age when all authority is questioned, where populations are more diverse than ever before, where individual's identities are more multifaceted and where acts of terror in the name of religion dominate the news headlines. The conventional account has drawn a line of causation between these political and social developments and the rise of Law and Religion studies. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
