Religion, public law & the state

Names and abbreviations on this page

PJD — Parti de la Justice et du Développement — Justice and Development Party. A Moroccan political party; the abbreviation comes from its French name.

CEST — Central European Summer Time. A time-zone label two hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time; it records the cited publication time.

Basic concept

In the Roman Empire, public authority and religious practice were closely connected. Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313 permitted Christian worship, and Emperor Theodosius I’s legislation in 380 favored Nicene Christianity. These decisions did not create a single permanent arrangement: rulers, bishops, judges and local communities continued to contest who could command obedience and decide disputes.

Across medieval Europe, the conflict over appointing bishops became a struggle over property, courts and political power. Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV confronted one another during the Investiture Controversy of the 1070s; the Concordat of Worms in 1122 negotiated a division of roles. In Islamic societies, jurists developed religious legal reasoning while caliphs, sultans and local officials exercised governing authority. Neither history can be reduced to a simple division between “religious” and “secular” law.

Public law today depends on a particular constitution, legislature, court system and enforcement authority. A religious teaching can shape a voter’s convictions or an organization’s rules without itself becoming a law binding everyone. The decisive questions are who enacted the rule, where it applies, and which institution may enforce it.

Protest events

Public demonstrations have repeatedly forced arguments about religion, education and state authority into legislative debate. In France, the 1905 law separating churches and the state followed decades of disputes over schools, public financing and the role of Catholic institutions. Aristide Briand, who reported on the separation bill, helped shape a settlement that ended the state’s formal recognition and payment of religious bodies, subject to important exceptions and later legal qualifications.

In the United States, the civil-rights movement combined religious leadership with constitutional claims. Martin Luther King Jr. and other organizers used churches as meeting places during the 1955–1956 Montgomery bus boycott. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 became enforceable federal law only through government action, not through the religious standing of the campaigners.

University and labor demonstrations likewise involve distinct institutions: organizers may demand funding or policy changes, while ministries, legislatures and courts determine what follows. A march documents public mobilization; it does not by itself establish that a proposed rule has become law.

Case to examine: Argentina: fifth federal university march. [1]

Islamist political movements

In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, reformers debated how Muslim societies should respond to European imperial expansion, new state bureaucracies and changing education systems. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838–1897) and Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905) advanced influential, though different, arguments about renewal and public authority. Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, organizing religious education, welfare and political activism. Later movements diverged sharply over elections, constitutional limits and the use of force.

Iran’s 1979 revolution under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini produced a constitutional system combining elected institutions with supervisory religious authority. Turkey’s Justice and Development Party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from its rise to national government in 2002, followed a different political trajectory within a formally secular republic. Neither example defines all Islamist politics.

In Morocco, the Justice and Development Party (PJD) participated in parliamentary government under a monarchy that retains substantial constitutional and religious authority. Abdelilah Benkirane became head of government in 2011 after constitutional reform and elections; Saadeddine Othmani succeeded him in 2017. The party’s sharp electoral losses in 2021 showed how participation, coalition compromises and voter judgment can reshape a movement without resolving wider disputes over religion and the state.

Case to examine: Morocco’s PJD and monarchical participation. [2]

Islamic religious traditions

Islamic jurisprudence developed through centuries of teaching, debate and judicial practice rather than through one modern national legislature. Malik ibn Anas (c. 711–795) taught in Medina, and the Maliki school spread through North Africa and parts of West Africa. Abu Hanifa (c. 699–767), al-Shafi‘i (767–820) and Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780–855) became associated with other major Sunni legal schools. Their followers discussed scripture, transmitted reports, customary practice and methods of legal inference.

Under the Ottoman Empire, state administrators and judges worked with Islamic legal traditions while issuing administrative regulations. In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Mecelle, compiled from 1869 to 1876, codified substantial areas of civil law using Hanafi jurisprudence. Modern countries have since adopted different combinations of civil codes, constitutional provisions, family-law rules and religious courts.

Consequently, the presence of Maliki or another jurisprudential tradition in a community does not tell a reader which laws its government enforces. In Morocco, for example, Maliki Sunni Islam has a recognized public role, but statutory law, constitutional institutions and courts also determine legal outcomes.

Case to examine: Maliki jurisprudence. [3]

Christian traditions and currents

The Protestant Reformation transformed arguments about church authority and government. Martin Luther’s public challenge to indulgence practices in 1517 developed into conflicts over scripture, rulers and religious jurisdiction. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 allowed specified rulers within the Holy Roman Empire to choose between Catholicism and Lutheranism for their territories; the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 revised parts of the settlement after devastating warfare.

Later Christian political movements responded to industrialization, urban poverty and mass democracy. Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed labor, property and social obligations. After 1945, Christian-democratic parties helped shape European reconstruction: Konrad Adenauer led West Germany’s government from 1949 to 1963, while Alcide De Gasperi headed Italian governments during much of the postwar transition.

Christian-democratic parties operate through elections and public legislation, whereas churches exercise authority through their own religious institutions. Their positions may overlap on education, welfare or family policy, but a party manifesto cannot automatically be treated as the teaching of every church or believer.

Case to examine: Christian democracy. [4]

Institutions and Western societies

Constitutional settlements differ across Western democracies. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1791, prohibits Congress from establishing religion and protects free exercise. Judicial interpretation later applied key protections to state governments. France’s 1905 separation law developed from a different history, while England continues to have an established Church of England alongside extensive legal protections for other faiths.

After the Second World War, the European Convention on Human Rights was signed in 1950 and entered into force in 1953. Article 9 protects freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to manifest belief subject to specified legal limits. The European Court of Human Rights considers disputes under that framework, but national constitutions and legislation still differ.

These arrangements affect schools, religious dress, public employment, marriage, charities and the financing of religious institutions. A comparison between countries must identify the precise rule and the court or public body responsible for it, rather than assuming one Western model. [5]

A useful comparison

Consider three separate questions. First, what does a religious teacher or institution say its members should do? Second, what political change does a party, campaign or protest coalition seek? Third, what does the enforceable law actually require? These answers can differ even when the same people participate in all three settings.

For a historical example, compare France before and after the 1905 separation law; for a contemporary political example, compare the PJD’s electoral program with Morocco’s constitutional allocation of authority. For an individual legal dispute, identify the relevant date, jurisdiction, statute and court decision. That sequence reveals who held power, how a rule changed, and whose daily life was affected.

Related learning

Argentina: fifth federal university march

Morocco’s PJD and monarchical participation

Maliki jurisprudence

Christian democracy

External Resources