ABSTRACT
In the scheme of this book, religious workers differ from volunteers in that they do have contracts and so they do have employment rights. However, as with volunteers in church life, so also here there has been no systematic study of the legal rights of religious workers. This chapter aims to remedy this by explaining their legal status. As with volunteers, religious workers underpin much of church life, which would often cease to function without them, but there has been no detailed evaluation of their legal status.
In this scheme, religious workers are employees and so have the same rights as all other employees and can, in principle, claim for unlawful termination of contract and unlawful discrimination. On the other hand, by the very fact that they work for religious bodies there can be various special provisions applicable to them whether imposed by their contract, by domestic discrimination legislation and by the interpretation of the courts of the ECHR. This chapter evaluates these provisions and in particular the lawfulness of attempts by religious bodies, in line with their ethos, to impose restrictions on their workers.
