This volume represents an attempt in integrating a wide range of theoretically relevant issues into the identification and analysis of church-state patterns. Confessional heritage, national identity, the embeddedness of churches in civil society, formal and informal aspects of state religious neutrality (and its limits), secularization, the religious appeals of parties, and public policy formation in sensitive areas constitute the major contextural variables. Each chapter, in addition to discussing recent developments in a particular country or region of Europe, focuses on the analysis of one or other of the above mentioned themes and its role in shaping and/or being shaped by, church-state relations.