Maria Grazia Martino and her contributing authors highlight the different solutions found by
European countries with different ecclesiastical law systems different distributions of
Christian denominations and different percentages of Muslim immigrants: Germany Switzerland
France Sweden Italy and Greece. Churches and religious communities are actors from civil
society. The state sets the framework for their activities first and foremost by formal legal
acts in ecclesiastical law. Besides this field of law religion policy has increasingly
developed into a policy field of its own. Which incentives and steering tools used by the state
cause which kind of behavior which role in society and which self-understanding among churches
and religious communities? This edited volume answers these questions.
