Project: Protestant Legacies in Nordic Law: Uses of the Past in the Construction of the Secularity of Law

Protestant Legacies in Nordic Law: Uses of the Past in the Construction of the Secularity of Law (ProNoLa) is relevant to the HERA call by researching the conscious and unconscious uses of the Lutheran and broader Protestant past for the construction and institutionally embedding of norms and values in Nordic secular law. The overarching goal of ProNoLa is to examine relations between Lutheran majority traditions, broader Protestant theology, and the development of secular law in the Nordic region in the course of the last 500 years. Highlighting the numerous ruptures, twists and turns in the relationship between law and secularity, the project aims to provide a more complex, nuanced and critical genealogy of the negotiations of law and religion in the Nordic and German realms. The expected outcome of the research is thus a reformulated grand history about interlinkages between Lutheran and broader Protestant theology within majority and minority churches and the secularity of the law; not only in the historic period until the Enlightenment era, but during subsequent periods into the current re-confessionalisation and internationalization of relations between religions, state and law. ProNoLa is implemented by organizing research symposia with subsequent publications and dissemination concerning four overlapping but distinct historical periods involving transformation processes and turns; taking its point of departure in Lutheran reformation and reaching into a 21st Century religiously pluralist future. Finally, in the fifth turn, Norden meets Europe the re-telling of the grand history is presented and disseminated to a wider academic and non-academic public.

Acronym	ProNoLa (Reference Number: HERA.15.050)
Duration	01/07/2016 - 30/06/2019
Project Topic	REFLECTIVE-1-2014
Network	HERA JRP UP
Call	HERA Call “Uses of the Past”

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Faculty of Theology	Coordinator	Denmark
2	Faculty of Law	Partner	Finland
3	Faculty of Theology	Partner	Norway
4	Faculty of Law	Partner	Sweden
5	Lehrstuhl für Öffentliches Recht, Kirchenrecht, Staatskirchenrecht	Partner	Germany
6	Council of International Relations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark	Observer	Denmark
7	Church Research Institute Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland	Observer	Finland
8	Church of Norway National Council	Observer	Norway
9	The Research Unit at Church of Sweden	Observer	Sweden
10	Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, Kirchenamt	Observer	Germany
11	The Danish Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs	Observer	Denmark
12	Evalgelical Lutheran Church in Finland	Observer	Finland
13	Royal Norwegian Ministry of Culture, Department of Church Affairs	Observer	Norway
14	Nämnden för Statlig Stöd till Trossamfund	Observer	Sweden
15	Bundesministerium des Innern	Observer	Germany