On January 18, 2024, Nathan J. Brown organized and participated in a panel discussion titled “Hiding in Plain Sight? How Religion and State Interact in the Global North”, hosted by the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study (HIAS) in Hamburg.  The event brought together scholars who work comparatively on religion-state relations in Western and “secular” societies, examining how deeply intertwined religion and state practices often are, sometimes in ways that are not obvious or publicly acknowledged. 

The panelists included Nathan J. Brown (George Washington University/HIAS Hamburg), Gudrun Krämer (Freie Universität Berlin), Mirjam Künkler (Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London), and James Wellman (University of Washington). The discussion was moderated by Nadjma Yassari, Professor of law at Universität Hamburg and head of the research group “Changes in God’s Law” at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law. 

Topics covered in the discussion included controversies over school curricula, public space, religious dress, family law, and how religious communities engage with policy and law in societies that are often assumed to be fully “secular.” The panel explored not only overt interactions—like legal frameworks for religious instruction or religious symbolism in public—but also the more subtle ways in which secular law, social norms, and religious practice shade into one another in the everyday lives of individuals and communities. 

For many participants, one of the key insights was that secularism in the Global North is far from monolithic: despite claims of separation of church and state, religious values, norms, and institutions retain significant influence on public policy and social life, often in areas people might not immediately link to “religion” (e.g. welfare, education, moral policy debates). The panel emphasized that understanding these interactions helps illuminate how religion continues to shape public life, even when it is “hidden,” and how claims to neutrality often mask deeper entanglements. 

https://hias-hamburg.de/en/events/hiding-in-plain-sight-how-religion-and-state-interact-in-the-global-north/?utm_source=chatgpt.com