A peculiar or exempt jurisdiction is, broadly speaking, one which does not fit into the general scheme of jurisdiction within the Church. It is “exempt” from the “normal” structures, its jurisdiction is “peculiar” to itself. It is important at this stage to note that peculiars are jurisdictions, not places, still less buildings. A jurisdiction can be personal, territorial, or a mixture of the two. However, since the reformation, most jurisdictions in the Church of England have been largely territorial, hence the convention of referring to them as places.

This article presents an anthropological account of the European Court of Human Rights' approach to material religion. Focusing on a range of cases involving an alleged violation of Article 9 – the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion – in relation to such diverse religious objects as cassette players, incense, crucifixes, photographs and cross necklaces, it draws on ethnographic studies of material culture to suggest a disconnect between the Court's emphasis on religion as belief and the lived experience of embodied, sensual and object-oriented religious practice. It concludes that Article 9's privileging of the forum internum over material practice has contributed to an immaterial view of religion and religious life. Such an understanding ultimately fails to appreciate the importance of objects in the creation, expression and maintenance of religious worlds.

Questions have arisen as to the manner of the publication on 9 November 2009 of Anglicanorum coetibus, the Apostolic Constitution Providing for Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans Entering into Full Communion with the Catholic Church. What is clear is that the views of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, under Cardinal Walter Kasper, were given less weight than ought to be expected and that both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of Westminster were informed at only a late stage. More assuring for the long term, Cardinal Kasper has stated that this provision is not a new form of ecumenism. Significantly, the Vatican statement following the meeting between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Benedict XVI in Rome on 21 November reiterated ‘the shared will to continue and consolidate’ the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Churches of the Anglican Communion and noted approvingly that the details of the third phase of ARCIC would be discussed at informal talks with Anglican representatives in the days following the Archbishop's visit to the Pope. Whatever else the Ordinariate may be, it is not a substitute for that ‘serious dialogue’ established by Archbishop Michael Ramsey and Pope Paul VI which has as its continued goal, despite obstacles ancient and modern, the restoration of ‘complete communion of faith and sacramental life’ between us.

It has become almost a commonplace of textbooks that English public ecclesiastical law has no application to the colonies. Halsbury states this baldly and without qualification, relying chiefly on the judgment of the Privy Council in Re Lord Bishop of Natal, a case of unquestioned significance for the development of the family of churches in the English Prayer Book tradition. But both from historical interest and with an eye to those colonies still in being, the issue is one which deserves a second glance. This article will argue that whether or not the Natal decision was right on its facts, the Judicial Committee in that case made an important distinction which later textbook generalisations—and indeed the Crown's advisers at the time—appear to have overlooked; and that other decisions, relied upon in support of such generalisations, can be supported neither from principle nor from earlier practice.

During the earlier part of 1993 a paper of mine was published in the Ecclesiastical Law Journal. Entitled ‘What of the Church in Wales?’, it endeavoured to suggest why the disestablished Church in Wales still maintained the characteristics of an established Church. The paper seems to have aroused much interest within certain circles of the Church of England, especially among synod members, at a time when the question of disestablishment was once more being publicly aired. The point was made to me repeatedly that disestablishment would need to be accompanied by dis-endowment, although the only reason for this assertion appears to have been the historical precedents of the Irish and Welsh disestablishments. I am not competent to write about the former, but with regard to the latter I feel that a historical examination of the events which led to the disestablishment of the Church in Wales might raise some question marks against this assertion.

On 8–9 July 2007 at Brecon Cathedral, members of the Centre for Law and Religion held an inaugural annual away day to review its work and plan long-term strategy ahead of the tenth anniversary of the Centre in 2008. The success of the LLM in Canon Law, the first degree of its type at a British university since the Reformation (set up in 1991 with the support of the Ecclesiastical Law Society), led those involved in that course and others at Cardiff Law School to recognise the need for a community of scholars dedicated to the study of law and religion. The Centre was established in the summer of 1998 to promote research and its dissemination in this field. It was established with the approval of the university and the encouragement of the Department of Religious and Theological Studies. Its activities are carried out in relation to the theory and practice of substantive law concerning religion, the focus being principally upon religious law (especially canon law) and national and international law affecting religion, with regard to their historical, theological, social, ecumenical and comparative contexts.

Shattered Faith is the story of Sheila Rauch Kennedy's marriage and divorce from Congressman Joe Kennedy, a member of one of the best known families in the United States of America. Married in 1979 in a Catholic Church, Mr Kennedy was a Catholic while Mrs Kennedy remained an Episcopalian. Twin sons were born in 1980 and baptised as Catholics, with godparents from both Christian churches. The marriage began to unravel when Mr Kennedy was elected to Congress. Separation in 1989 was followed by divorce because of ‘irreconcilable differences’. In 1993, Mrs Kennedy received notification from the Metropolitan Tribunal of the Archdiocese of Boston, informing her of the petition lodged by her former husband to have the marriage declared null on the grounds of lack of due discretion of judgement (though whose lack of due discretion is not made clear). Shocked, and while willing to acknowledge that the marriage had failed (evidenced in a divorce), she could not accept that it had never existed as a sacrament.

This study explores juridical aspects of the ecclesiology presented in the World Council of Churches' Faith and Order Commission Paper, The Church: Towards a Common Vision (2013). It does so in the context of systems of church law, order and polity in eight church families worldwide: Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Reformed, Presbyterian and Baptist. Common Vision does not explicitly consider church law, order and polity or its role in ecumenism. However, many themes treated in Common Vision surface in church regulatory systems. This study examines how these instruments articulate the ecclesiology found in Common Vision (which as such, de facto, offers juridical as well as theological principles), translate these into norms of conduct and, in turn, generate unity in common action across the church families. Juridical similarities indicate that the churches share common principles and that their existence suggests the category ‘Christian law’. While dogmas may divide the churches of global Christianity, the profound similarities between their norms of conduct reveal that the laws of the faithful, whatever their various denominational affiliations, link Christians through common forms of action. For this reason, comparative church law should have a greater profile in ecumenism today.1

This journal has published two distinguished series on the lives and careers of individual jurists in the history of English church law, from the mediaeval period to the late nineteenth century: one by Professor Sir John Baker on ‘famous English canonists’ (1988–1997); and the other by Professor Richard Helmholz on ‘notable ecclesiastical lawyers’ (2013–2017). Most prepared for their professional careers with the study of civil law at Oxford or Cambridge (and before the Reformation also of canon law). Many practised as judges, advocates and proctors in the church courts (until statute ended much of their jurisdiction in the 1850s). Some wrote treatises on church law. A small number were also priests, but less so as the centuries unfolded. While these professional canonists and civilians may have had a monopoly in practising church law, they did not have a monopoly in thinking or writing about it. The clergy, who never trained or practised as lawyers, also had things to say about church law. But the clerical profession has been somewhat neglected by scholarship as a class contributing to the history of church law and jurisprudence. From diocesan bishops through parish priests to clerical scholars in the universities, their books, pamphlets, sermons, letters and other materials often deal with the nature, sources and subjects of church law. Their aims vary: from the educational through the historical or theological to the practical and polemical. These priest-jurists – fathers-in-law, they might quip – contributed much to the intellectual development of church law. One is Robert Owen, a Welsh scholar cleric whose books include Institutes of Canon Law (1884). No scholar has to date unveiled Owen as a notable Anglican priest-jurist – strangely, he has been lost to scholarship as among those whom he himself chided as ‘eminent Canonists’ who ‘hide themselves’ and remain ‘veiled Prophets’.

In Spain, immigration has been one of the main reasons for a significant number of conflicts regarding the use of religious symbols. In this context, the fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in the Spanish Constitution are expected to play a very important role as a criterion to solve these tensions. However, a more accurate response is provided by case law, where the variety of circumstances that surround each conflictual situation can be taken into account to reach the best solution.1

Although six bills appeared on the agenda paper for Dublin this year there was only one of real substance. Two were to correct some cross-references in previous legislation, one was of a technical nature relating to voluntary pension contributions and a further bill imposed a requirement on dioceses to provide statistics to central Church bodies when demanded.

According to the Pew Research Centre, 76 per cent of the world's population live in countries where they face ‘high or very high’ restrictions on religion or belief. Over the five years that Pew has been tracking this metric, the percentage of people that face ‘high or very high’ levels of restrictions by their government has risen from 58 per cent to 64 per cent. What is more alarming is the figure for ‘high or very high’ social hostilities (that is, acts of religious hostility by private individuals and groups, including armed conflict and terror), which jumped from 53 per cent in 2011 to 74 per cent in 2012.