Ebook: Religious Symbols and the Intervention of the Law: Symbolic Functionality in Pluralist States

This book analyses the relationship between the state, individuals and religious symbols, considering the three main forms of religious expression, symbols that believers wear on their body, symbols in the public space such as religious edifices and rituals that believers perform as a manifestation of their faith. The book looks comparatively at legal responses in England, the U.S.A and France comparing different approaches to the issues of symbols in the public sphere and their interaction with the law. The book takes a multidisciplinary approach drawing on the psychology and sociology of religion and symbols, in order to examine how this could help inform the law.