Liberal Neutrality and State Support for Religion

Leni Franken is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). Her research interests are political and autonomy-based liberalism, church-state relations, neutrality, faith-based schools and religious education. In 2011, she edited Religious Education in a Plural, Secularized Society (Waxmann)

• Part 1: Liberalism and Neutrality.- Chapter 1: Liberalism and Neutrality – a philosophical Exploration.- Chapter 2: Neutrality and Autonomy.- Chapter 3: Autonomy and valuable Options: Raz, Kymlicka and Chan.- Chapter 4: Reformation Liberalism: non-autonomy based.- Conclusion Part 1.- Part 2: Autonomy-based Liberalism and active State Support for valuable Options.- Chapter 5: Can a liberal State support Art?.- Chapter 6: Liberal State Support for Art and liberal Neutrality: Criteria.- Chapter 7: Active State Support for Religions and liberal Neutrality: Criteria.- Chapter 8: Active State Support for faith-based Schools.- Chapter 9: Active State Support for Religious Education.- Conclusion Part 2.- Part 3: Church-state Models and Neutrality.- Chapter 10: Church-state Models in an international Perspective.- Chapter 11: Political Secularism: passive and assertive.- Chapter 12: Active State Support for Religions.- Chapter 13: State Church.- Conclusion Part 3.- Part 4: General Conclusion: liberal Neutrality and active State Support for Religions: a Contradiction in Terms?.- Bibliography.

"This volume collates the work of top scholars in the field. ... A number of concrete church-state models, including hands-off, religious accommodation and the state church are evaluated, and the book gives some recommendations in order to optimize those church-state models, where needed. Practitioners and scholars of politics, law, philosophy and education, especially religious education, will find this work of particular interest as it has useful guidelines on policies and practices, as well as studies of church-state models." (Georg Neureither, Religion - Weltanschauung - Recht (RWR), religion-weltanschauung-recht.net, May, 2016) "The particular richness and real contribution of Leni Franken's work is the application of liberal theories of justice, which are rarely focused on religion, to the question of the legitimacy of financial state support for religion. ... Leni Franken's work shows that, even though we cannot claim that a state should finance religion in order to be neutral in a political liberal sense, we can at least say that the state can consider such financial support, without losing its neutrality." (Stephanie Wattier, Revue de droit international et de droit compare, April, 2017)