ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore the relative rights of parents, children, and the State in regard to religious upbringing. This represents a vexed issue of competing rights and duties in liberal democratic and pluralist societies today. Parents have a fundamental responsibility for the religious and general education of their children and certain rights for passing on their own values. Children have a right to an education that equips them to flourish in a liberal, pluralist, democratic society, which is also a postindustrial, information-driven society. The State has a corresponding duty to oversee the form of education that will promote this. The balancing of these various rights and duties raises many complex issues about the very nature of a liberal society. This is particularly evident in the debate about the rights of religious minority groups who do not necessarily subscribe in their own communities to the liberal values of the broader society.
