Over the last 30 years, work at Cardiff University by my colleagues and I have identified and shaped the study of law and religion in England and Wales and have explored its interdisciplinary interaction with theology, history and sociology. This article draws upon, summaries and develops my previous work on the interaction between law and religion and the sociology of religion to focus in on particular on what could be achieved by employing a sociological perspective to the internal laws of religions. It falls into two sections. The first will explore the merits of a sociological approach to religious law generally while the second will focus on how the internal laws of religion can be better understood through application of social systems theory.

Details