Introduction

This introduction provides an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses what three relatively recent actual court cases, one from Europe, one from the United States, and one from Canada, can teach us about how the right to freedom of religion or belief, and in particular its associational and institutional dimensions, is currently being interpreted and applied. It then argues how in our present time, in which Western societies, despite a clear degree of secularization, have at the same time become perhaps more divided than ever, according to social pluralist thought a democracy needs to be characterized by a generally accessible and as a result truly pluralistic public square. The book also outlines the implications of a return to a more limited form of government and the development towards a truly pluriform democracy for the associational and institutional dimensions of the right to freedom of religion or belief in particular.