Taking Religion Seriously: On the Legal Relevance of Religious Self-Concepts

Abstract

How can the law deal with religion in an adequate manner, if on one hand it must guarantee religion its status of autonomy and therefore cannot construct its own idea of religion, and on the other it needs to know the object of legal protection? The present paper scrutinizes one possible solution to this problem developed by the German Federal Constitutional Court. According to this judicial strategy, the law orients itself by referring to the relevance of religious self-concepts that are to a certain degree legally binding.