Research

Both anchored in the Constitution and in international conventions, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly - and many more - are important dimensions of Denmark's international obligations, protection of minorities and legal certainty. In legal practice and in research, there is an increasing focus on the conflicts between rights that can arise when, in particular, religious freedom is a significant factor. A number of such matters are current in societal and professional debates, e.g. blasphemy vs. freedom of expression, collective religious rights vs. protection of the individual, or internal affairs of religious communities vs. state regulation, or protection against discrimination, indirectly especially.

Increasingly, public servants in Denmark have to deal with religion. Situations with which we are already familiar include the following: Employees of the Family Court who are asked to make sure that a divorce is not only legally but also religiously valid. The prison staff who meet demands for religious pastoral care, or that kitchen utensils must not have previously been used for pork. Doctors who are asked to find solutions for how patients can fast healthily during Ramadan. Judges who have to deal with whether Seventh-day Adventists can refuse to work on Saturdays, whether doctors can give blood to members of Jehovah's Witnesses, and whether the Evangelical Lutheran Church can introduce rituals for the marriage of homosexuals. There is a great need for research into which of such problems exist, how the public servants relate to such requests today and whether there is a consistent practice, as well as what forms of "best practice" can be derived.

In religious groups, including partly in formal religious communities, but also partly in looser networks, including family networks, there are often internal religious rules which the members are expected to observe. It may concern e.g. whether a member can be excommunicated for sexual immorality, whether other members may communicate with an excommunicated member, whether it is possible to remarry in the church after a legal divorce, who may receive communion, how inheritance is to be distributed and much more. In some situations, religious groups even have religious councils or courts that can decide how the rules should be understood. In some groups, such decisions can be perceived as very binding, or have clear consequences because the rest of the group considers them binding, even if they are usually not legally binding. There is a great need for deeper insight into which religious legal bodies and legal practices exist in Denmark, and how religious law develops and unfolds.

Danish law is strongly influenced by the religious history of Denmark, where religious thoughts influenced the development of the legal system, i.a. within family law and criminal law. Although today we do not legislate on a religious basis, we still build on concepts developed from an earlier time. Also, new religious trends in Denmark are influenced by the legal history in Denmark, and the choices made many years ago regarding the regulation of religion, e.g. the possibility that religious communities can conduct legal marriages, which gives new Danish communities some opportunities that do not exist in most other European countries. Both the legal and religious structures have been challenged over the past century by new trends, including the increase in both secularization and religious diversity.

Law and theology have much in common methodologically and theoretically. It is e.g. the two scientific disciplines, which both work with a "dogmatics", and which have developed research methods to investigate partly the dogmatic content of their research objects, and partly how this dogmatics influences and is influenced by its surroundings. Nevertheless, researchers from these disciplines are rarely in dialogue about the insights that they, for example, has focused on how dogmatics is explored empirically, when dogmatics is research and when it is not, and which theories can be used to understand how dogmatics develops and unfolds in relation to the empirical approaches. It is obvious that the disciplines can learn from each other in this field. Theories applied to one field can be relevant to the other, and only in the interaction can new methods and theories for the study of law and the field of religion be created.