Seven Essays

The relations between religions and laws, whether the latter are based on religious or secular principles, vary between cultures and have changed through history. 

Since these relations are dynamic and mirror power and gender hierarchies, they have often been dramatic, and not infrequently violent. Religious ideas can inspire as well as contradict law; laws can support or circumscribe religion. In relation to justice, religious power and public laws can be supportive or obstructive, promote it or undermine it. Religion, law, and justice denote three of the most important perspectives through which history can be interpreted and the contemporary world problematized. The seven essays in this volume exemplify a selection of approaches to the analysis of these three factors.

The book has been edited by Håkan Rydving, Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Bergen, Norway, and Stefan Olsson, Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Umeå, Sweden.


Contents

Preface
Håkan Rydving & Stefan Olsson

Contributors

lntroduction
Håkan Rydving

The Symbolic Function of the Law in Ezra 9-10
Kristin Joachimsen

How Things Make Monks Objects and artifacts in the Pachomian rules
Ingvild Sælid Gilhus

God, King, and Church The king as divinely elected in Norwegian law and rhetoric from the early modem period to the late nineteenth century
Gina Dahl

"Islamic Order". Semeiotics and pragmatism in the Muslim Brotherhood
Ulrika Mårtensson

Family Law, Female Citizenship and State Formation in Arab States. Pre-2011 conditions and post-2011 reflections on political transitions
Rania Maktabi

The Right to be Exempted. A discussion of the relationship between religion, law and education in Norwegian public schools
Marie von der Lippe

Religion and Law
Stefan Olsson

Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture (IFSK), Series B: 166

ISBN 978-82-7099-912-5, 170 pp., hardcover
Format: 17x24 cm, weight 0,6 kg, year of publication 2018, language: English