Abstract
The political dimension of religion has gained considerably importance in the public debate of the past three decades (Herbert, 2003; Kepel, 1994; Körner, 2020). In the process, the climate of this discussion has also changed. Religions and religious people, especially in Western countries, are increasingly obliged to explain whether and how their views, values and traditions are compatible with a majority secularised, liberal democratic society. The articles in this volume aim to contribute to the debate on the role of religion in democratic societies by presenting analyses dedicated to the complex interplay of religion, democracy, and citizenship. Since these three concepts – religion, democracy, citizenship – are already multifaceted in themselves, it is essential to first outline the complexity of the object of study before the specific focus of this volume and the individual contributions can be presented in a further step.
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Acknowledgements
The research findings compiled in this volume were presented and discussed at a conference on ‘Religion, Democracy and Citizenship’ held at the University of Würzburg from 10 to 13 October 2019. I am very grateful to Prof. Dr. Dr. Hans-Georg Ziebertz and his staff (especially Sylvia Scheller) for organising this conference. I would also like to thank the authors of this volume, who have revised their presentations for publication. Moreover, I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who helped us to improve the manuscript through their constructive feedback. Finally, I would like to thank my student assistants Anne Effing, Janina Balke and Sebastian Dötsch for preparing the layout of the manuscript and for compiling the index.
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Unser, A. (2021). Introduction: Religion, Democracy and Citizenship. In: Unser, A. (eds) Religion, Citizenship and Democracy. Religion and Human Rights, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83277-3_1
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