Sabbatical Patrick Pasture: A History of Christendom: Church, State and Religious Freedom in the West

I want to use the sabbatical in the first place to finally write the book that I've researched for twenty years: "A History of Christendom: Church, State and Religious Freedom in the West." In it I will develop a new interpretation of the long-term history of the relations between the Christian church(s) and the state in Europe and North America, analyzed in their global context (i.e. including the impact of colonization and imperial and international relations). . Based on this, I can propose an alternative to dominant interpretative frameworks about the development of a secular society (as in Charles Taylor's The Secular Age, Harvard UP, 2007 and Brad Gregory's The Unintended Reformation , Harvard UP, 2012). My focus is mainly on the development of ideas and practices related to religious tolerance, freedom, diversity and pluralism. In that respect it is also a personal synthesis of the research in the framework of the H2020 project RETOPEA. The core ideas are fixed, but above all I need plenty of time and access to an extensive library to finally write it out. Research is still needed, especially with regard to the regional diversities in Europe (especially in the peripheral areas).