Religious Socialism in Post-Secular Europe

Abstract

ABSTRACTRecent scholarship on Religion and International Relations critically questions the secularist assumptions on which the discipline was founded. Yet many combinations of the religious and the political remain unexplored, particularly those that exist on the left of the ideological spectrum, such as religious socialism. Focusing on the International League of Religious Socialists (ILRS), the main religious socialist organization in Europe since the 1920s, I argue that European networks of religious socialists act as interlocutors between social democratic parties, minority religious communities, and the state, while defending political secularism from both secular and religious forms of extremism. This is a marked change from the Cold War era, during which religious socialists took up concerns of the global south, such as dependency theory and disarmament. In the conclusion, I discuss how religious faith, political secularism, and social democratic principles fit together in the contemporary religious socialist worldview, and consider the wider significance of religious socialism in a post-secular age.