THE INTERPLAY AMONG RELIGION, POLITICS AND LAW IN EUROPE New challenges and future trajectories

his chapter seeks to investigate the interplay among religion, politics and law through the prism of the main European constitutional and legal patterns in the framework of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Although infl uential scholars have emphasized the irreconcilable divide among them as the paradigm of modernity, a clear separation seems an unmanageable issue. At present, in modern democratic societies, religion has a growing role in the public sphere, legal systems must cope with “deep” religious diversity and the rise of an institutional dimension of religious freedom, and religious claims generate fi erce judicial litigation. Moreover, there is increasing political and social polarization on extremely divisive moral-ethical issues, which gives rise to new “culture wars”, and nationalist-populist parties are driving forces which promote the politicization of religion. In the European scenario there is not a uniform legal approach toward religion: there is variable geometry concerning what is religion, whose religious freedom deserves protection, what degree of religious freedom can be granted in postsecular societies, and whether and to what degree third parties can suffer the impact of the exercise of religious freedom. This chapter analyses the increasing complexity of the interplay between religion law and politics in Europe focusing on new challenges (including migration flows, health crisis, new religious movements, gender discrimination, conscientious objection and ethical pluralism) and recent legal changes, with a view to tracing future common legal trajectories.