RELIGION'S ROLE IN CONSTITUTIONS OF THE WORLD. A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
RRSS 2013 No.4 - Romanian Review of Social Sciences
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Authors:
• Kazem Hajizadeh -
Keywords: Christianity, constitution, Islam, religion, religious freedom, secular, state
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Abstract:
Since the late twentieth Century, many theories have emerged in sociology of religion challenging classic and prevalent modernization-secularization theory and emphasizing religion plays an important role in modern societies. These theories stepped strongly into the twenty-first century. This article examines religion's role in constitutions of the world in order to evaluate these arguments generally and illustrates the relationship between religion and power in the contemporary world. We see that most states protect freedom of religious beliefs but the protection for freedom of religious practices and making religious groups is low. Furthermore, although in a number of countries religion plays an important role in informal social life yet, formal social life has been being secularized. This analysis is done based on the statistical data collected from constitutions of 166 countries.