ICLRS Associate Director Elizabeth Sewell presented a paper, “State Funding and Autonomy of Religious Groups,” in the opening session of the international conference “Financing of Churches and Religious Societies in the 21st Century,” held under the auspices of the Minister of Culture of the Slovak Republic, on 14-15 October 2009 in Bratislava, Slovakia. The conference was designed in part to provide comparative experiences on financing of churches to assist Slovak government officials in drafting changes to that country’s system of financing of religious groups. It was attended by scholars, religious leaders, and government officials from Europe, Russia, Japan, South America, and the U.S. For more information about this conference please visit the link below.