Table of contents

1. A preliminary thanks, beyond form and occasion – 2. Definition of the field, preliminary framework and structuring of the analysis – 3. The connotation in a strong sense of the bond and the conforming characterisation of the employment relationship: clergy and religious – 4. The need to contain disciplinary specialisation and rebalance the relationship between institutional-collective and individual freedom. Nature of the duties of the employee and nature of the institutional activities of the employer: practicability and usefulness of the distinction – 5. From membership to conformity. Forms of indirect or “mediated” manifestation of the constraint and strengthening of the need for restraint in the case of the possible public nature of the medium – 6. The peculiar configuration of the constraint in the so-called ideologically oriented organisations – 7. Between public and private. Interference and contamination: a) (formally) public institutions guaranteed in their particular ideological tendency – 8. The fluidity of approach and solutions in the case law of the ECHR – 9. More on the interferences and contaminations between public and private: b) private institutions (indirectly) required of (at least partial) ideological neutrality. The path of 'spontaneous' rebalancing in the jurisprudence of the US Supreme Court – 10. Overview and perspective notes

Abstract

The article discusses from a comparative perspective the hypotheses in which religious affiliation qualifies the employment relationship. In particular, it focuses on the work performed by religious people and the employer choices made by ideologically oriented organisations