'Faith's Comeback?: The Demographic Revival of Religion in Europe' (original) (raw)
Related papers
Religion and the myths of secularization and separation
2011
The RELIGARE project is about religions, belonging, beliefs and secularism. It examines the current realities in Europe, including the legal rules protecting or limiting (constraining) the experiences of religious or other beliefbased communities. Where the practices of communities or individuals do not conform to State law requirements, or where communities turn to their own legal regimes or tribunals, the reasons behind these developments need to be understood. Partners: 13 (10 countries
Why, at all, do we need Religion? Religion and Morality in Post-Communist Europe
Church and Religion in Contemporary Europe, 2009
Continuing debates about the secularization process in Europe, and particularly about the impact of secularization on different aspects of individual and social life, got one another dimension after 1989. Up to then officially atheist part of Europe collapsed and religion generally got new, previously unimaginable possibilities of public acting. This process, usually marked as revitalization process, started to dominate both social life and scientific researches. However, the story has been far from being clear. At least three parallel processes have been noticed and discussed. 1 First, the revitalization of religion is clearly confirmed, at least on two basic grounds. The first one is connected with the role of Churches in public life. The pre-Communist time was not resurrected but (particularly dominant) Churches resumed much of their power lost after 1945. They re-established their official ties with states (in the case of the Catholic Churches by international agreements with the Holy See), they re-entered public schools, returned much of their properties and got big media attention. The second aspect was visible from the data on individual connections with Churches and/or religion. Although the base line was very different among different countries, they all noticed the trend of rising religiosity in the late 80s and early 90s. Although noticeable the revitalization trend did not occur in the same pace in different countries but, moreover, the striking thing is that differences in the level of religiosity among countries have remained so big, bigger than in Western Europe. Those who claim belonging to religious denomination range in 1999 from 97.6% in Romania and 95.7% in Poland through 70.0% and 57.7% in Bulgaria and Hungary respectively to only 33.5% and 24.8% in the Czech Republic and Estonia respectively. In the light of these data any speech about the revitalization for a large group of countries (even if it is, up to certain level, true) has become almost meaningless. Third and apart from the limited revitalization in some countries, many researches pointed out contradictory aspects of the new social life of religion. According to the existing sociological literature these contradictory aspects can be further subdivided in different branches. The majority of approaches paid attention to adaptation problem: Churches generally want to awake their precommunist position what is hardly possible in changed modern world. Confused expectations from the public complicates the picture: at the same time the majority rejects political involvement and even public social role of Churches (epitomized in the phrase: priests should restrict their activities to Church buildings) but expect their involvement in public issues, such as rising poverty and inequality, rights of workers, etc. These contradictory expectations can be connected with very visible ideological (left-right) social division and debates about the proper role of Churches in modern world. The position of religious minorities in post-Communist Europe emphasizes the old dilemma: how to reconcile
European Journal of Philosophy, 2006
Religious traditions and communities of faith have gained a new, hitherto unexpected political importance since the epochmaking change of 1989-90. 1 Needless to say, what initially spring to mind are the variants of religious fundamentalism that we face not only in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Southeast Asia, and in the Indian subcontinent. They often lock into national and ethnic conflicts, and today also form the seedbed for the decentralized form of terrorism that operates globally and is directed against the perceived insults and injuries caused by a superior Western civilization. There are other symptoms, too. For example, in Iran the protest against a corrupt regime set in place and supported by the West has given rise to a veritable rule of priests that serves other movements as a model to follow. In several Muslim countries, and in Israel as well, religious family law is either an alternative or a substitute for secular civil law. And in Afghanistan (and soon in Iraq), the application of a more or less liberal constitution must be limited by its compatibility with the Sharia. Likewise, religious conflicts are squeezing their way into the international arena. The hopes associated with the political agenda of multiple modernities are fueled by the cultural self-confidence of those world religions that to this very day unmistakably shape the physiognomy of the major civilizations. And on the Western side of the fence, the perception of international relations has changed in light of the fears of a 'clash of civilizations'-'the axis of evil' is merely one prominent example of this. Even Western intellectuals, to date self-critical in this regard, are starting to go on the offensive in their response to the image of Occidentalism that the others have of the West. 2 Fundamentalism in other corners of the earth can be construed, among other things, in terms of the long-term impact of violent colonization and failures in decolonization. Under unfavorable circumstances, capitalist modernization penetrating these societies from the outside then triggers social uncertainty and cultural upheavals. On this reading, religious movements process the radical changes in social structure and cultural dissynchronies, which under conditions of an accelerated or failing modernization the individual may experience as a sense of being uprooted. What is more surprising is the political revitalization of religion at the heart of the United States, where the dynamism of modernization unfolds most successfully. Certainly, in Europe ever since the days of the French Revolution we have been aware of the power of a religious form of traditionalism that saw itself as counter-revolutionary. However, this evocation of religion as the
Religion and Nation: Modernity, Secularism, and Politics
2010
The papers published here are the result of a multidisciplinary symposium with contributors dealing with issues regarding the political nexus of religion and the modern nation-state. The symposium aimed to highlight the nuances and complexities of the politics of religion. We therefore asked the presenters to examine socio-political problems rather than questions of doctrine. In their varying approaches the participants rose to the occasion and moved discussion beyond the simplistic equations of the "rise of religion" in the face of globalization. Some of the specific issues included, legal-constitutional questions, religious and political violence, the role of religion in East-Central European Politics, political identities influenced by religion, political religions in the contemporary world, civil society and the role of religion, and a number of other considerations. The relationship between politics and religion was treated as something that was not merely a "str...