Current Developments and Political Trends

Abstract

At the core of Europe’s identity lies a wealth of cultural, linguistic and religious diversity, characterized by plurality. The several forms of religious pluralism in different European countries have been, and still are, bound up with their respective religious traditions. The latter’s socio-religious content, organizational forms and process of integration into the nation-state, have resulted in different types of pluralism such as the French ‘individualistic pluralism’, founded on the religious freedom of the individuals, or the ‘pluralism of the communities’, a reaction to the assertion of modernity (mainly the rise of secularization) as established, for example, in the Netherlands, and to an extent (as ‘communitarian individualistic pluralism’) in the United Kingdom (Champion 1999). Moreover, co-operation between State and religion may involve ‘principled pluralism’, when the State recognizes the public value of religion, or ‘pragmatic pluralism’, when the State collaborates with religion to achieve common goals (Doe 2011, p. 38), such as the preservation of historical chapels, cathedrals, sculptures, frescos and other monuments that bear witness to a long European history of unparallel aesthetic and religious values; the vast variety of spiritual traditions and the plethora of religious cults (i.e. established practices, rituals and rites) are also constituent elements of the same exquisite European culture.