Liberal Neutrality and State Support for Religion / Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life Bd.5 (PDF)

Leni Franken is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). Her research interests are political and autonomy-based liberalism, church-state relations, neutrality, faith-based schools and religious education. In 2011, she edited Religious Education in a Plural, Secularized Society (Waxmann)

“The particular richness and real contribution of Leni Franken’s work is the application of liberal theories of justice, which are rarely focused on religion, to the question of the legitimacy of financial state support for religion. … Leni Franken’s work shows that, even though we cannot claim that a state should finance religion in order to be neutral in a political liberal sense, we can at least say that the state can consider such financial support, without losing its neutrality.” (Stéphanie Wattier, Revue de droit international et de droit comparé, April, 2017)




“Franken has written an excellent and clear book on the question of the relations between State and Church and on the question of State support for religion within the context of liberalism Writing. ... I recommend this book not only to philosophers, theologians and political thinkers,but also to politicians, especially liberal politicians.” (Norbert Campagna, Ethical Perspectives, Vol. 24 (2), 2017)





“This volume collates the work of top scholars in the field. … A number of concrete church-state models, including hands-off, religious accommodation and the state church are evaluated, and the book gives some recommendations in order to optimize those church-state models, where needed. Practitioners and scholars of politics, law, philosophy and education, especially religious education, will find this work of particular interest as it has useful guidelines on policies and practices, as well as studies of church-state models.” (Georg Neureither, Religion - Weltanschauung - Recht (RWR), religion-weltanschauung-recht.net, May, 2016)