Introduction: The Social Equality of Religion or Belief

Abstract

Members of religious groups have recently gained legal protection in the UK and in other jurisdictions against a range of civil harms, such as discrimination, harassment and victimisation, and the free exercise of religion has itself been newly guaranteed (Addison 2007; Fredman 2011; Hepple 2014). In jurisdictions influenced by European norms, the protections against harm have often been extended to adherents of secular belief-systems, so that the phrase ‘religion or belief’ has gained currency to describe the locus of protection.

I am grateful to David West for his comments on an earlier draft of this Introduction and to Beryl Spink and Edward Reiss for numerous discussions of the issues involved.