Revista Derecho y Religión, "Christianity in Europe", vol. III, 2008

Presentacióon: Charalambos Papastathis, Universidad Aristóteles de Salónica 

The present third volume of Derecho y Religión is devoted to “Christianity in Europe”. It deals with the current canonical and legal dilemmas, necessities and situation of the Churches, as well as with the way in which these issues could be resolved in the first Christian continent.

 European cultural tradition is based on three pillars: Greco-Roman civilization, Christianity and the Enlightenment. The great schism of 1054 has disrupted the second pillar, thus separating the once united Church into the Orthodox and Roman-Catholic Churches, while the Reform of the 16^th century which spread in several European countries created the various Protestant confessions at the detriment of the latter.  These Churches have followed since –each and every one–, their own path in European history, considering the others as misguided in doctrinal and canonical matters.

 We tried –though we did not receive the response we had hoped for from prospective contributors–, to shed light on some issues at stake in the Churches of Europe. Thus, some space has been devoted to the preoccupations of Orthodox Christianity, which had been as a rule ignored in the Western relevant bibliography. After the political events that occurred in 1990, on the one hand the Orthodox Church –already second in number of faithful in our continent–, and, on the other, the rights related to the freedom of religion have begun to get more attention.

 The studies published in this volume cover the following sections:

 The first concerns the Roman-Catholic Church. The second section deals with the Protestant Churches and more specifically with two issues therein: ministry, as performed in the German Churches, and the juridical perspectives of Protestantism. The contributions on the Orthodox Church in the third section concern State-Church relations in countries of Orthodox tradition; the ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Orthodox Diaspora –a question which will be vividly debated in the near future among Orthodox Churches–, and, finally, with the related to the latter issue dialogue among these Churches, considered in a historical perspective. The fourth section comprises two studies, one on the new religious movements and another on the conviventia of the Churches in Europe.

The general topic and its many facets are, of course, far from being exhausted in this volume. Our intention has been to bring forward and initiate a discussion on key issues by specialists on relevant fields, affiliated to various confessions and Churches. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my learned colleagues, who graciously responded to my request and accepted to contribute their special knowledge to this volume with exemplary scholarship.