Tijdschrift voor Religie, Recht en Beleid

Samenvatting

Religion in the public domain has been a theme of remarkably current interest for a long time in our country as well as elsewhere in Europe. Not only in dialogue and debate, but primarily also via specific occasions, practices, and situations. One can think here of the position of the many redundant church buildings, the granting of permits for public religious manifestations, the ringing of church bells or public calls to prayer, the role (or abandonment of the role) of governments in rituals following disasters and accidents, the structure of citizenship rites and other forms of civic/civil ritual, the involvement of governments in religious celebrations in the public domain such as processions or Iftar meals, et cetera. This contribution explores the place of religion in the public domain in a specific way, i.e. on the basis of practices: its starting point lies in traceable manifestations of religion in our culture and society, in practices and rituals. After some conceptual orientation, this approach takes the form of a general panorama of religious-ritual presences and manifestations in that public domain and a further exploration of those via a model of so-called ritual-sacred fields.