A lay state - constitutional safeguards and legislative implementation

This dissertation deals with the relationship between state and religions as social phenomena and examines it from several perspectives in order to review the meaning of the term "lay state." In the first chapter, it analyses the common history of states and religions, describes the important role of religion in the ancient states and then focuses on the rise of Christianity and its spread in the Roman Empire, its role after the fall of Rome and in the formation of the new social and state structure of Europe. It discusses the fight for supremacy between Popes and Emperors and the fall of the temporal power of the church. It suggests that neither religion, nor states can prevail over each other because of their different nature. The church failed in its attempt to usurp temporal power over states, and so did the totalitarian states of the twentieth century in their aspiration to annihilate religion and to substitute it with their atheistic ideologies. In the next chapter the dissertation examines international documents concerned with the human rights, especially with the freedom of religion. It describes the shift in its perception: initially viewed as a domain the states should not interfere in, is now accepted as a domain that gives rise to several positive obligations that are incumbent on states to..