In The Law of Organized Religions, Julian Rivers takes readers on a tour of the interaction between law and religion in the English milieu with an eye toward presenting a constructive critique of current models of interaction. Rivers starts as close to the beginning of the story as one can, with what can be retrieved of Celtic Britain's encounter with Rome. Providing a brief but sufficient history of church and state interaction in the British world, Rivers then analyzes several traditional touchstones between the law governing the state and that governing religion. Included in this analysis are examinations of human rights, constitutions, chaplaincies, education, welfare programs, and more. Rivers looks at the ways religion affects and is affected by each particular area of law. The result is a particularly useful resource for scholars and students to learn more about religious organizations' interactions with the state. In his concluding thoughts, Rivers outlines an approach to church-state relationships that may stand at odds with general assumptions that analogize church rights to individual ones.
Rivers offers a particularly compendious analysis of contemporary human rights frameworks, showing that their structures and interests relate meaningfully to prior agreements and developments in Western Europe. These connections are helpful in ascertaining the ways in which contemporary rights arrangements work on individuals and states. Moreover, the ways in which corporate religious bodies are treated, both nationally and internationally, are given attention in light of the contemporary system of human rights. Germane to current discussions related to churches' ability to object to laws on the grounds of conscience, Rivers identifies certain individual rights that are currently not applied to larger groups.
In his concluding chapter, Rivers revisits the contention that while corporate religious groups are treated differently than individuals in terms of rights and obligations, the grammar used to vindicate the rights of religious bodies is still that of individual human rights. Rivers asserts that individual rights as concepts are inadequate to protect the interests of religious bodies. Religious organizations are far more complicated than unique individuals. Issues of property ownership at the dissolution of a body, appointment of leaders, and intra-body tribunals make a simple analogical “possessive individualist” rights regime for religious bodies untenable. Rivers argues for a conception of religious organizations that occupies space between the contrapuntal approaches of establishment and pure secularism.
It is this conclusion that drives Rivers's analysis of law and religion in the English experience. Rivers advocates for an understanding of religious groups' autonomy within a larger legal structure. While establishment of a religion yokes that religion to the law, and while secularism either effects total separation or legal indifference, autonomy presents a third option. Rivers notes, “[A]utonomy requires not only the power of self-government under one's own law, it requires also the power to create legal effects in State law. Some degree of recognition of religious law and deference towards it by State courts is essential” (335). Autonomy, argues Rivers, stands synthetically and productively between secularization and establishment.
ZCE
