As the title suggests, Transformation of Church and State Relations in Great Britain and Germany is a comparative piece. It is the fourth volume in the Schriften zum Religionsrecht (Writings on Religious Rights) book series published by Nomos – the first three volumes all having been written in German. It is a collection of essays based on a conference by the same name held in Münster, Germany, in July 2010 at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität. Indeed, save for the odd addition and a bit of reordering, the conference programme and chapter structure of the book is almost identical. Moreover, the essays maintain the informality of delivered speeches, with several being written in the first person and referred to as remarks or papers.

The book is divided into three sections: ‘Historical Development’; ‘Interactions between Religious and Secular Law’ and ‘Questions of Status and Organization’. Within each section there are a number of chapters. Broadly speaking, each chapter covers an issue in Great Britain (mostly England), followed immediately by a comparative chapter on the situation in Germany. But this is not always the case. The first chapter, an eighty-three-page essay by Augur Pearce entitled ‘The development of church–state relations in England’, marks an excellent opening to the book. However, rather than being followed by a chapter on the historical development of church–state relations in Germany there is instead a five-page essay on ‘The Scandinavian Experience’. Moreover, some chapters do not have counterparts at all and some are on standalone topics.

Although the structuring of the book is frustrating at times, the content of the essays is both informative and interesting. Readers of the Ecclesiastical Law Journal will be very familiar with many of the contributors – the likes of Peter Cumper, Peter Edge, Mark Hill, Ian Leigh, Julian Rivers and Lucy Vickers all make typically stellar contributions.

Within the overarching theme of how church–state relations in Great Britain and Germany are evolving because of increasing religious and cultural diversification, particularly through immigration, there is a wide range of issues covered by the different essays. Following a historical backdrop, the legal protection of individuals is addressed. This section includes essays on the work of ecclesiastical courts in England and Germany, followed by the workings of secular courts. How the secular courts handle religious disputes is examined exclusively within the context of employment law. After a short European detour, in which the case law of the European Court of Human Rights is considered, principally in relation to issues of church autonomy and religious associations, the book turns to the issue of religious communities: first, how religious communities participate in public life in Great Britain and Germany, and, second, the legal status of Muslim communities in both countries.

Each essay works well as a standalone piece and that is perhaps the best way of approaching the book. For those wishing to read about the development of church–state relations in Great Britain in more detail, there are other places one can go. Indeed, most of the contributors have written far more extensively on these issues in their own publications. For those wishing to understand better how a close neighbour is handling many of the issues prevalent in Great Britain – immigration and demographics, the place of the established church, twenty-first-century religious disputes and so forth – the book is certainly a useful ‘first read’. However, the number of pages dedicated to the German perspective is less than a tenth of the book, and so, again, there are other places one could read in more detail.

Transformation of Church and State Relations in Great Britain and Germany comes in the wake of a number of other similar comparative works, many of which have been reviewed in this Journal. Although the essays are well written, by academics at the top of their field, the process of merging a collection of conference papers into a cohesive book could have benefited from a little more editorial work.