The Relationship Between Religion And Law

Abstract

Between law and religion, two of the great forces that have shaped human society, there has always been an inevitable and indissoluble link, both having their origin in the belief in a system of a divine, superior power and in the necessity of certain rules that regulate the behavior of people in society. Religious and legal norms were initially identical, but with the passage of time they became different primarily by their specific nature. As a human-centered norm and spirituality, law interferes with religion to varying degrees in its temporal and spatial existence. The authority of the legal order is based on the divine origin and the sacred character of the rules of law. The authority of the law is based on three categories of forces: the material force, the force of reason, and the mystical force - based on the belief that the observance of a rule of conduct is the observance of a divine commandment. Religious precepts consider, even at the level of sanction, man's relationship with Divinity, while legal ones consider the individual's relationship with the social group, which sanctions him. Affirming the principle of the secularity of law means recognizing the freedom of belief or religion, with the consequence of separating the state from the church, the political space from the religious one. Secularization means the neutrality of the authorities, including in education, towards the diversity of religious beliefs and implies religious tolerance. Although today there is almost no formal relationship between law and religion, a latent connection between the two is preserved through their common substratum. Thus, law enforcement, even secular ones, are based on reasoning and observation, but also on feeling and intuition. Between the rules of law and religious precepts there are numerous points of contact, overlapping areas, similarities, differences and mutual influences. Law, judicial practice and legal doctrine also contain religious elements. Law regulates social relations between people, and religion deals with the relations between people and Divinity, extrasocial and extrasensory relations.