Abstract
This article analyzes the conflictive role of religion in post-1989 Europe. Three major reasons for this are addressed: first, the restoration of structural and cultural pluralism of European civilization since the breakdown of communism entails the reconstitution of the full diversity of European religion. Second, international migration as a crucial part of globalization has intensified, contributing to the transformation of Europe into a complex of multi-cultural and pluri-religious societies. Third, the wave of contemporary globalization has been accompanied by an intensification of inter-civilizational and inter-religious encounters and conflicts — particularly between Christianity and Islam. As a result, European integration and enlargement as a secular and humanist mode of cultural integration and religious governance are basically challenged by this three-fold revitalization of religion. The growing tendency is to respond to this challenge by enhancing the Christian foundations of Europe rather than, as this article argues, to follow a more cosmopolitan, secularist and religious pluralist mode of European cultural integration.
Highlights
In post-1989 Europe, religion is playing a growing and increasingly conflictive role in European societies and politics
There are three interrelated reasons for this: first, along with the breakdown of communism and the reconnection of divided Europe, there has re-emerged the encompassing structural and cultural pluralism of European civilization characterized by different forms of religion and secularization patterns, as well as their varying impacts on states, nations, ethnic groups and related collective identities
I will do the following: (1) outline the multiple modernities approach to Europeanization and religion; (2) compare the different relationships of the religious-secular configurations in Western and Eastern Europe to the EU cultural integration mode; (3) characterize European and national forms of citizenship and cultural integration regarding immigrants and their minority religions; (4) analyze the growing impact of religious diversity and mobilization on European intra- and inter-civilizational boundary constructions and the consequences for the eastern enlargement of the European Union; and (5) conclude with a critique of the secular-religious European cultural integration mode from the perspective of a (North American) mode of religious pluralism
Summary
In post-1989 Europe, religion is playing a growing and increasingly conflictive role in European societies and politics. There are three interrelated reasons for this: first, along with the breakdown of communism and the reconnection of divided Europe, there has re-emerged the encompassing structural and cultural pluralism of European civilization characterized by different forms of religion and secularization patterns, as well as their varying impacts on states, nations, ethnic groups and related collective identities.
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