Introduction

As Chapter 1 proposed, the study of law and religion can be understood as the study of two elements. The first, ‘religion law’, comprises the external temporal laws affecting religious individuals and groups which are made by State legislatures (and certain supra- and sub-State institutions). The second, ‘religious law’, comprises the internal spiritual laws made by religious groups themselves. The argument was made that the study of law and religion in England and Wales must be seen as requiring at least the study of these two overlapping elements. However, much of this book and much of the law and religion literature has been concerned with religion law rather than religious law. The detailed study of religious law has largely been left to experts in particular religious law systems, such as experts in Islamic law, Jewish law, Hindu law, Roman Catholic canon law or the ecclesiastical law of the Church of England.

However, this has begun to change. There have been a number of important comparative studies. Moreover, a number of writers have begun to focus more upon questions concerning the status and application of religious laws. This has been provoked in part by a lecture on the relationship between Islam and English law by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 7th February 2008, in which he tentatively suggested that ‘we have to think a little harder about the role and rule of law in a plural society of overlapping identities’ and spoke of ‘a scheme in which individuals retain the liberty to choose the jurisdiction under which they will seek to resolve certain carefully specified matters’.