In its ruling in these prejudicial procedures, the EU Court of Justice clarifies the extent to which private employers are allowed to prohibit visual expressions of inter alia religious beliefs in the workplace. This contribution critically discusses the Court’s interpretation of the concepts of direct and indirect discrimination as well as its definition of the criteria that the employer must meet to objectively justify a difference of treatment of employees indirectly based on inter alia religion. Furthermore, it discusses the room that the Court allows in this respect for national provisions that protect freedom of religion.

This article takes issue with the tendency among political scientists and cultural critics to reduce the current rise of populism to resentment among certain groups in society. Instead, the article argues that particularly right-wing populist cultural criticism is derived from the Christian conceptual foundations of Western culture. Typical for these foundations has been the process of ‘diversification’ as defined by the American political philosopher Eric Voegelin (1901-1985). As such, ‘diversification’ is diametrically opposed to the so-called ‘immanentization of the eschaton’ characteristic of modern Gnosticism. Populism is to be understood as a counter-movement to this Gnostic tendency in politics.

In recent years, it has often been suggested that the CDA, and to a lesser extent the ChristenUnie (CU) and the Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP), are losing voters to right-wing populist parties. To examine this proposition, the article first looks at which ‘Christian voters’ would be inclined to vote for right-wing populist parties. Next, a comparison is made between the positions of Forum voor Democratie (FvD), the Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) and JA21 and Christian parties, with respect to issues that are important to Christian voters. An analysis of the various election programmes for the 2021 parliamentary elections shows that while there is overlap between Christian and right-wing populist parties when it comes to limits on religious freedom and moral issues, there also remain significant differences and shared positions are often underpinned by very different arguments.

The relative openness of the concept of public order is increasingly instrumentalised in legislation which affects religious minorities. This article argues that a permanent distinction must be made between social norms and public order, and that an appeal to social norms in the context of public order indicates a free, or ‘ad libitum’, use of constitutional law.

In 2020, the Belgian federal Government announced that it will recognize Buddhism as a non-confessional worldview. This recognition will give the Buddhists several privileges: the salaries and pensions of lama’s as well as of Buddhist consultants in prisons, hospitals and the army will be paid for by the state. In addition, state schools will be required to organize Buddhist education at parental request. From the perspective of equal treatment and within the current constitutional framework, the recognition of Buddhism can only be welcomed. But is this constitutional framework, which is amongst others indebted to the concordat between Napoleon and the Holy See (1801), still up to date? In 1983, the Dutch Government abolished this Napoleonic model of state financing and opted for a profound reform of the system. In this article, I will show why such a reform could also be useful and inspiring in the Belgian context.

The Netherlands has witnessed a strong process of secularization, the rapid decline of institutionalized Christianity, i.e. the churches. An important explanation for this process is educational expansion: the increase in the number of highly educated people in the Netherlands contributes to the decline of religion. Other instances of modernization, such as individualization, provide additional explanations for secularization. As modernization continues, secularization will do so too with consequences for the churches themselves, but also for related social and cultural structures in the area of, for example, the media or education, for the tolerance between religious and secular Dutch and for citizen participation.

Since – and even before – the start of the Cornelius Haga Lyceum (islamic secondary school in Amsterdam) in 2017, the school board has been involved in legal procedures against the government to fight for their right to exist as an islamic school. The difficult way the school was established, the illustrious history in the last ten years and the director’s retreat are described based on literature, media reports, and jurisprudence. The events are placed in the light of the pursuit from the government to fight radicalisation – may be even islamisation – in Dutch society and specially in Dutch schools. Special attention is paid to relevant themes of education law, like freedom of education in article 23 of the Dutch Constitution and citizeneducation.

This article analyses the legal position of Christian communities in the Roman Empire before the middle of third century CE. It will be argued that the treatment of this group, which has often been marked as unique by both public opinion and academic debate, can only be explained by placing Christianity within the broader societal and administrative framework of the Roman world. A comparison with the treatment of other contemporary religious groups is necessary for a better understanding of the underlying principles and mechanisms that collectively shaped the Roman authorities’ attitudes towards these religious communities.

The Court of Justice has ruled that the Flemish complete prohibition of the unstunned slaughter of animals according to religious laws is not contrary to EU law, notwithstanding the exception in Regulation1099/2009 and Article 10 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (religious freedom). The Court used the concept of the interpretation of human rights in the light of present day conditions, not to extend the scope of the freedom concerned, but to restrict the religious freedom of Jews and Muslims. Religious rules that have existed for millenniums may give way to very recent views on animal welfare. This contribution is a critical appraisal of the judgment.

The books by the French writer Alexis Tocqueville attracted great interest, also in the Netherlands, including Groen van Prinsterer and his friends. Groen frequently quotes from it, often with approval – for example about the vulnerability of democracy –, sometimes with critical commentary – about democracy as the fruit of revolutionary concepts, for example. This article contains the result of an investigation into intercourse of Groen with the works of Tocqueville. This research was carried out as part of the Tocqueville project of Prof. Sophie van Bijsterveld, professor of Law, Religion and Society at Radboud University in Nijmegen (https://www.ru.nl/tocqueville/).

What is a good governance approach to uncertainty or reflexivity? Reducing uncertainty is an important task of policy and governance, but it can also derail. That is why good governance includes holding space for uncertainty. A Christian worldview provides insights for a more relaxed handling of uncertainty. The notions of certitudo, improvisation and humility are then central. Together, they form building blocks for a post-secular perspective on governance in times of crisis.

Spiritual caregivers in the Netherlands are available in the military and in penitentiary institutions, in health care institutions and, recently, in the police. Within the military and the justice system, the spiritual care is traditionally characterised by a clear division of responsibilities between church and state. Due to domain specific developments in health care institutions and within the police, positions and responsibilities are less clear-cut. Developments such as the increased number of denominations that provide spiritual care tends to regard spiritual caregivers as ‘ordinary employees’. This article analyses the position of spiritual caregivers in the various domains and discusses current developments. It asserts that the church-state arrangement in the classic spiritual care areas requires respect and that the gist thereof should be taken into account in legal arrangements in the other domains.

In this article, we review our model for the study of conversions of 2016 and present some notable results of the past five years of research. During this time, we have observed a striking pattern, namely that the mode of participation in the old religion (mainly Islam) correlates with the keyword converts use to describe their new religion (mainly Christianity). We give four possible explanations out of the fields of hermeneutics, psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. Our main conclusion is that the model could be too focused on the general patterns of conversion and less on the specific words a convert uses to describe his or her own story.

The bill to clarify the order of citizenship education explicitly refers to the Constitution as the bearer of the basic values of the democratic constitutional state. However, the Constitution only concerns citizens in a vertical sense, in relation to the government. The Dutch Constitution says nothing about the relationship between citizens and is therefore unsuitable as a basis for citizenship in the broad sense of the word. Because the Constitution does not make these basic values explicit, the government would do well to remove the reference to the Constitution from the bill in line with the advice of the Onderwijsraad.

Terrorism can only be brought to an end if Islam and the Muslim community are enlisted as allies in combating it. Underlying militant jihadism is a violent interpretation of Islam which can best be challenged with the assistance of Islam and the Muslim community. Since the effects of the current state-led approach are questionable, while its criminal law component is close to exceeding the limits set by the rule of law and turns Muslims into a suspect community, it is important to test by way of a pilot whether an approach based on Islam can reap more promising results.

This article deals with recent developments in legislation and court rulings concerning churches. These developments are divergent in terms of the issues they concern and the outcome they show. The article sketches the background of each of these developments and analyses and explains them in the perspective of the principle of church autonomy. It concludes with recommendations to the legislature and the courts as well as churches themselves.