국가의 종교지원 기준과 세계 종교기구의 설립

Abstract

Although religions were undifferentiated from society In premodern times, they have been differentiated from state and society since modernization. Above all, as religious pluralism has come to be prevalent, modern states have legalized the principle of religious freedom and the theory of no establishment in their constitutions. Therefore, it can be often said that the governmental support to religion is very limited in the constitutional contexts of modern states. That is, states are clearly separated from religions in modern societies and the governments are partially guaranteed to interfere with religious affairs only in the cases like the following: 1. It has a secular and legislative purpose. 2. It leads to neutral effects to other religion. 3. It assumes no excessive government entanglement with religions . There have happened to be many international conflicts related to their religions since the 20th century. Thus many religionists have realized the need of various kinds of interreligious dialogues and tried to establish certain united institutes of world religions. Such institutes are said to have been partially successful in cooperation for secular purposes to solve the problems like poverty and environment. However, they have actually neither been very effective nor powerful, because they have been just focused on the formal meetings of the religious leaders. Some religionists have argued to establish a united institute of world religions in Korea these days, considering the unique multi-religious situation of contemporary Korea and expecting the more active roles of the Korean religions toward world religions. But the author criticizes such an argument on the basis of the constitutional theory of separation between religion and state and the ineffective realities of the existing united institutes of world religions.