Secularization as a European Fate? – Results from the Church and Religion in an Enlarged Europe Project 2006

Abstract

Since the controversial debate on the inclusion of religion in the preamble of the European Constitution at the latest, it has become obvious that ‚soft’ cultural differences persist in the joint European region even after the cessation of the ‚hard’ political differences between Western and Central Eastern Europe. On the one hand, countries such as Poland and Hungary pressed for the inclusion of the Christian notion of God in the European Constitution, on the other hand, other countries (such as France) tried to avoid such an explicit definition. This controversy may certainly be interpreted as an indication of the problems in determining the social relevance of religion in Europe in a general sense. However, it may also point to the relevance of an approach which has often been considered to be out-dated or refuted – the secularization theory.