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The Religious Situation in Europe

José Casanova

This essay is divided into three parts. First, I ofer a very general and thereoresomewhat supercial overview o the contemporary religious situation in Europe.In the second part, I ofer a series o arguments why the paradigm o secular-ization is not very helpul in trying to explain the complex religious situation inEurope today, and why we need to look at the secularization o Western Europeansocieties with new eyes and with new perspectives, which can only come roma more comparative historical and global perspective. Finally, I ofer somesuggestions as to why the expectation that religion would become increasinglyprivatized and thereore socially irrelevant has not proven right and why, on thecontrary, we are now witnessing the act that religion is once again becoming animportant public issue in Europe.

Overview of the religious situation in Europe

First o all, it is important to emphasize that there is not one single and uniormreligious situation in Europe. There are multiple, very diverse and ambiguousreligious situations and trends throughout Europe which one should avoidcharacterizing in simple terms. I can only indicate here some o the most obviousdiferences. Former East Germany is by ar and by any measure the least religiouscountry o all o Europe, ollowed at a long distance by the Czech Republic andthe Scandinavian countries. At the other extreme, Ireland and Poland are by arthe most religious countries o Europe with rates comparable to those o theUnited States. In general, with the signicant exceptions o France and the CzechRepublic, Catholic countries tend to be more religious than Protestant or mixedcountries (ormer West Germany, Netherlands), although Switzerland (a mixedand traditionally polarized country comparable to Holland) stands at the high endo the European religious scale, with rates o belie similar to those o Catholic

Austria and Spain and with rates o participation and conessional aliationsimilar to Poland and Ireland. In general, ormer communist countries in East

Joas, Secluarization and the Wor206 206 24/03/2009 13:14:38



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and Central Europe, with the exception o Poland and Slovakia, have rates o religiosity lower than the European mean average, a position occupied by Britain

and ormer West Germany. But many o the ormer Communist countries, mostnotably Russia, and even more so Ukraine, which does not appear in this survey,have experienced remarkable religious growth since 1989.

In order to understand the complexity o the religious situation in Europe, itis helpul to distinguish between three diferent levels o analysis, namely religionat the level o individual religiosity, religion at the participatory associationallevel o religious communities, and religion at the conessional level o aliation,identication or membership in churches or in imagined religious communities.

Individual religiosity

With the exception o ormer East Germany, where only one ourth o thepopulation believes in God, and the Czech Republic, where the number o believers is less than 50 per cent, the majority o Europeans in every othercountry still arm’belie in God’. Former East Germany is actually the onlycountry o Europe in which a majority o the population, 51 per cent, conesses tobe atheist. The Czech Republic is the European country with the second highestnumber o atheists, but the proportion is signicantly lower, reaching only 20per cent. In any case, the range o belie and unbelie in Europe is signicantlywide. At the high end, over 90 per cent o the population in Poland, Ireland andPortugal declare themselves believers. In the Scandinavian countries, France, theNetherlands and Russia, the number o believers drops to a percentage in the 50s.Britain and ormer West Germany, with 69 and 65 per cent respectively, occupythe European middle. But the number o those who believe in a Judaeo-Christianpersonal God is much lower, dropping on the average over 20 percentage pointsin each country.

Somewhat surprisingly, the number o those who pray several times a monthand, even more so, the number o those who believe in religious miracles arein many countries higher than the number o those who believe in a ‘God who

is concerned’. As was to be expected, the number o those who claim to havehad a personal religious experience is much lower still, but the range o variationbetween the most and the least religiously musical populations o Europe is muchsmaller. Former East Germany is once again at the very bottom. Only 10 percent o its population claims to have had some deep personal religious experienceor the experience o religious transcendence. But surprisingly this gure is notso distant rom that in the majority o European countries, or even in suchsupposedly ‘religious’ countries as Ireland or Poland, where only 13 and 16 percent respectively claim to have had a personal religious experience.

Arguably, Italy, 31 per cent o whose population claim to have had a religiousexperience, is the country with the most religiously musical population o all

the rel ig ious s ituat ion in europe




208 s ec ul a r iz at ion an d t h e wor l d r el ig ion s

Europe. Only in ve other European countries does the proportion o thosewho claim a similar religious experience surpass 20 per cent. Surprisingly, in

this small group o countries with the highest level o experiential individualreligiosity, one nds France with 24 per cent and the Netherlands with 22 percent, two countries that in every other respect are supposedly among the mostsecularized o Europe. In any case, both percentages are still higher than thenumber o proessed atheists in both countries, which are respectively 19 and 17per cent o the French and Dutch populations. Former West Germany and Britainoccupy again the European middle ground; 16 per cent o their population claimto have had a religious experience, while those who declare themselves atheistsare respectively 11 and 10 per cent.

In summary one may say that although a majority o the population in mostEuropean countries still maintains some kind o general belie in God, the depthand extent o individual religiosity in Europe is rather low in so ar as those whoproess belie in a personal God, those who pray with some regularity and thosewho claim to have had some personal religious experience are a small minorityin most European countries. In this respect, unlike in the United States whereone nds high levels o individual religiosity even among the unchurched, amajority o the population in most European countries can be characterized assimply secular and non-religious. On the other hand, majorities o people inmost European countries, with the exception o ormer communist countriesand Denmark, believe in ‘lie ater death’ and this belie actually appears tohave increased in the last decades among the younger cohorts, arguably a clearindication o strong hope or transcendence even in secularized Europe.

Participation in collective congregational religion

Evidence o the drastic secularization, or at least o the ‘Entkirchlichung’(unchurching), o most European societies is more pronounced when one looksat rates o regular church attendance, at least two or three times per month,and at the proportion o those who claim never to attend church. Only in

three European countries, Ireland, Poland and Switzerland, do the majority o the population claim to attend church regularly. Less than 20 per cent o thepopulation in the majority o European countries attends church regularly, whilein ormer East Germany, Russia and the Scandinavian countries the proportiono regular churchgoers decreases to the single digits. Inversely, the proportion o those who never attend is less than 10 per cent in Poland, Ireland, Switzerland andPortugal, while it is 50 per cent or more in ascending order in France, Britain,Russia, the Netherlands and ormer East Germany.

This is probably the indicator o religiosity that has experienced the most

drastic and dramatic decline throughout most European societies since the1950s. There are, however, very signicant diferences in church attendance




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between Protestants and Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Muslims in Europe.Catholics have the highest level o regular church attendance (43 per cent) andthe lowest proportion o those who never attend (12 per cent), while Orthodox

Christians have the lowest proportion o regular churchgoers (only 8 per cent)and a signicantly high proportion o those who never attend (25 per cent).


Table 1. Belie in God in Europe (%)

Country Belie inGod

Theist Notatheist or

agnostic

Belie ina God

who is

concerned

Pray several

times a

month

Belie inreligious

miracles

Personal religious

experience

Atheist

Cyprus

Republic o Ireland

Poland

N. Ireland

Portugal

Italy

Spain

Austria

Switzerland

Slovakia

Latvia

Britain

Former

W. Germany

Hungary Slovenia

Bulgaria

Norway

Netherlands

Denmark

Sweden

France

Russia

CzechRepublic

FormerE. Germany

Greeley, , p. .





Among Protestants the two gures are very close: 25 per cent attend regularlyand 21 per cent never attend. European Muslims have very high rates o mosqueattendance (40 per cent), as well as the highest proportion o those who neverattend (29 per cent), which is understandable since attendance at Friday prayersis not a traditional religious obligation or Muslims, although it is becomingincreasingly customary.

The data on drastic decline in church attendance across Europe constitute thestrongest evidence or the deenders o the traditional theory o secularization.

Table 2. Percentage claiming no religious afliation by country and year

Country 1991 1998 Second generationwith no religious

afliation

Loss since childhood

W. Germany % % % %

E. Germany % % % %

Britain % % % %

N. Ireland % % % %

Austria % % % %

Hungary % % % %

Italy % % % – %

Republic o Ireland % % %

Netherlands % % % %

Norway % % % %

Sweden % % %

Czech Republic % % %

Slovenia % % % %

Poland % % % %

Bulgaria % % % – %

Russia % % % – %

Spain % % %

Latvia % % %

Slovakia % % %

France % % %

Cyprus %

Portugal % % %

Denmark % % %

Switzerland % % %

Total % % %Greeley, , p. .




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When compared with the very diferent evidence o continuing vitality incongregational, associational religion in the United States across all denominations

– Protestant and Catholic, Jewish and Muslim, and now Hindu and Buddhist – it is evident that this is the undamental diference between American andEuropean Christianity. The voluntary associational congregation, as Tocquevillealready saw clearly in the 1830s, orms the basis o the competitive systemo American denominationalism, and is the oundation o the generalized andvibrant associationalism o American civil society. European Christianity, orall kinds o reasons, never made the ull historical transition rom territorialnational churches based on the territorial parish or Parrgemeinde to competingdenominations o civil society based on voluntary religious congregations, the

model o the modern Gemeinschat. Even in Great Britain, the European countryclosest to the United States in this respect, the vibrant system o religiouscongregations that existed within both churches and sects, across England,Scotland and Wales, basically collapsed in the 1960s, contributing to whatCallum G. Brown has dramatically characterized as ‘the death o ChristianBritain’.

It is not processes o modernization and urbanization that explain thiscollapse, since British Christianity, like American Christianity, had alreadymade a successul transition to modern, urban industrial centres by the end o the nineteenth century. Thus, as long as we continue perceiving the processo Christian European secularization as a slow, accumulative and progressiveprocess o decline that accompanies general processes o modernization, wewill ail to seek a more persuasive explanation or the drastic secularizationo Western European societies since the 1960s. Along with the Netherlands,Britain presents perhaps the most dramatic example o a relatively sudden andprecipitous decline o church attendance as well as o church aliation, incontrast to the Scandinavian countries and ormer West Germany, which stillpreserve a relatively high level o church aliation, along with very low churchattendance. The high percentage o those who have lost their religious aliation

since childhood, 43 per cent in the case o the Netherlands and 33 per centin the case o Britain, which are comparable to the high gures o the highlysecularized ormer East Germany (46 per cent) and France (31 per cent), areevidence that the collapse was almost a single-generation phenomenon. But inthe case o ormer East Germany, as also in the case o the Czech Republic,one encounters a second generation without religious unaliation to add to thelarge numbers o the previous generation brought up with no religious aliation:48 per cent o ormer East Germans and 33 per cent o Czechs. Along withFrance, ormer East Germany and the Czech Republic are the most secular o

all European societies. These are the countries in which religion as a chain o collective memory is clearly disappearing. But it should be obvious that in all






three cases these processes o secularization cannot be understood simply interms o processes o modernization, but should rather be viewed in terms o the particular historical dynamics o state, church and nation. I assume ewpeople would be inclined to attribute the higher levels o secularization o ormerEast Germany, compared with those o ormer West Germany, to the act thatormer East Germany is a more modern society, unless o course one is willingto argue that secularity itsel is evidence o modernity.

Indeed, in order to understand the signicant internal variations in patterns

o secularization throughout Europe, not only between ormer East and WestGermany, but also among other European societies which are similar in many

Table 3. Church attendance by study and year: two or three times a month or more (%)

EVS EVS ISSP ISSP 1981 1990 1991 1998

W. Germany/Former W. Germany

E. Germany/Former E. Germany (awed)

Britain

N. Ireland

Austria **

Hungary **

Italy ** *

Ireland Netherlands *

Norway

Sweden

Czech Republic

Slovenia

Poland *

Russia

Spain *

Latvia Slovakia

France

Cyprus

Portugal

Denmark

Switzerland

Greeley, , p. .




213the rel ig ious s ituat ion in europe

Table 4. Church attendance by study and year: percentage never attending

EVS EVS ISSP ISSP 1991 1998 1991 1998

W. Germany % % % %

E. Germany % awed

Britain % % % %*

N. Ireland % % % %*

Austria % %

Hungary % % %

Italy % %** % %*

Ireland % % % %Netherlands % % % %

Norway % % % %

Sweden % % %

Czech %

Slovenia %

Poland % %

Russia % %**

Spain % %* %

Latvia %Slovakia %

France % %** %

Cyprus %

Portugal %

Denmark % % %

Switzerland %

Greeley, , p. .

Table 5. Church attendance by religion

% attending two or three times a month % never attending

Protestant % %

Catholic % %

Orthodox % %

Islam % %

None % %

Greeley, , p. .





other respects – or instance between Poland and the Czech Republic (two similarSlavic East European Soviet-type Catholic societies), or between France and Italy

(two similarly modern Latin Catholic societies), or between the Netherlands andSwitzerland (two highly modern bi-conessional Calvinist-Catholic societies) – itshould be obvious that one should look less at levels o modernization, whichexplain very little, and more at historical patterns o relations between church,state, nation, and civil society.

Imagined communities: national churches,confessional states and secular civil religions

Grace Davie has characterized the contemporary European pattern o relativelyhigh levels o individual religious belie in combination with relatively lowlevels o church attendance as ‘believing without belonging’. But the inversepattern, namely high levels o conessional aliation with low levels o belie and/or participation (which has been characterized by Danièle Hervieu-Légeras ‘belonging without believing’), is equally widespread across Europe. TheLutheran Scandinavian countries are the most dramatic illustration o thispattern, but in some respects it is also typical o ormer West Germany. TheScandinavian countries evince the lowest levels o church attendance in Europe,comparable only with ormer East Germany. Only 2 per cent o Danes, 5 percent o Norwegians and 6 per cent o Swedes attend church with some regularity.The levels o individual belie in God, just a slight majority o the population,and o occasional prayer (in the 20 per cent range), are also among the lowest inWestern European societies, comparable with those in the Czech Republic andFrance. Yet the Scandinavian countries show surprisingly high levels o religiousaliation, when measured by the small proportions o those who declare noreligious aliation, which are similar to the proportions one nds in much morereligious Catholic countries (Italy, Portugal, Austria, Spain) or in more religiousmixed countries (Switzerland or ormer West Germany). Only 10 per cent o

Norwegians and 12 per cent o Danes declare no religious aliation. Curiously,the number o proessed atheists in Denmark is higher (17 per cent), implyingthat close to one third o Danish atheists still view themselves as members o theDanish Lutheran Church. The percentage o Swedes with no religious aliationis much higher (29 per cent), but still signicantly lower than the percentages inBritain (45 per cent), France (47 per cent) and the Netherlands (55 per cent). Inshort, the overwhelming majority o Scandinavians consider themselves memberso their national churches, despite the act that many o them have no religiousbelies and practically never attend church.

This is the phenomenon that Dave Grace has aptly characterized as‘vicarious’ religion, namely the notion that religion is perormed by an active




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minority on behal o the wider population, who implicitly not only understandbut approve o what the minority is doing. Church leaders and churchgoers, the

religiously musical as it were, perorm rituals as well as actually believing onbehal o others. Moreover, national churches are still viewed as public goods towhich every citizen should have the right o access, when occasionally needed,or high estivities, rites o passage and especially in times o national crisis ordisaster. This is particularly the case in the Scandinavian countries or in ormerWest Germany, countries in which a majority o the population still voluntarilypay a relatively high church tax. But the same pattern o strong identicationand low participation is ound across Orthodox societies. The Catholic patternis more mixed. One nds, on the one hand, the paradigmatic pattern o Poland

and Ireland that combines very high identication with the national church alongwith very high participation. On the other hand, there is the Latin pattern,exemplied by France and Spain, in which the Catholic church itsel becomesnot so much the symbolic institution o national integration conronting anillegitimate oreign state, but actually the institution allied with an illegitimatenational state and thus the catalyst o a proound national cleavage betweenembattled and highly mobilized clerical and anti-clerical national camps. OtherCatholic societies all somewhere in between the two extremes, while Italyactually partakes o both. Due to the particular belated process o nationalunication and the role rst o the Papal States and then o the Vatican, someregions o Italy retain a resemblance to the Irish-Polish model, while others arecloser to the Latin model.

Even these ew reerences to various national patterns should serve to illustratethe act that the variations in levels o religiosity across Europe can be explainedbetter in terms o the very diverse and historically changing patterns o usionand dissolution o religious, political and national communities, that is, o theimagined communities o church, state and nation, than in terms o indices andlevels o modernization, that is, o socio-economic development, or o levels o urbanization, education, and so on. Nonetheless, there is also a strong correlation

between levels o modernization and levels o secularization. That is, some – butnot all – o the most secularized countries o Europe are also among the mostmodern. This explains the tendency o the secularization theory to explainpatterns o secularization in terms o levels o modernization, as i secularizationnecessarily ollowed modernization, in the sense that modernization itsel is thecause or precipitator o secularization. Such an assumption, which is alreadyproblematic in terms o the internal variations we have examined within Europe,becomes even more untenable the moment one adopts a global comparativeperspective.






European secularization from a global comparativeperspective

From a global comparative perspective it is becoming increasingly evident thatEuropean patterns o secularization are exceptional, rather than being themodel that other societies are likely to resemble as they modernize. Therehas been an extraordinary reversal in the debates on secularization in the lastdecade. Until very recently most discussions o secularization had assumed thatEuropean religious developments were typically or paradigmatically modern,while the persistence o religion in modern America was attributed to American‘exceptionalism’. America was the exception that conrmed the European rule, a

convenient way o not having to put into question the European rule. Progressivereligious decline was so much taken or granted that what required an explanationwas the American ‘deviation’ rom the European ‘norm’.

Under conditions o globalization it has become increasingly evident thatthe Eurocentric view that modern Western European developments, includingthe secularization o Western Christianity, are general universal processes is nolonger tenable. The more one adopts a global perspective, the more it becomesobvious that the drastic secularization o Western European societies is a ratherexceptional phenomenon, with ew parallels elsewhere other than in Europeansettler societies such as New Zealand, Quebec or Uruguay. The collapse o themoral authority and o the plausibility structures o some o the national Christianchurches in Europe is so extraordinary that we need a better explanation thansimply reerring to general processes o modernization. By ofering a pseudo-general explanation o a particular historical development, we impede thepossibility o developing a more convincing explanation o what is indeed a trulysignicant and undeniable phenomenon, namely the increasing secularization o many Western European societies since the late 1950s.

But the alternative theory being promoted by American sociologists o religionis also rather unpersuasive. It turns the American paradigm o ree competitivereligious markets into a general rule, claiming that ree religious markets in ando themselves are the independent variable and the primary explanatory key toreligious growth and vitality everywhere. Consequently, the theory explains thesecularization o European societies as the result o monopolistic or oligopolisticreligious markets. But the American paradigm o ree religious markets is alsounable to explain the internal variations o religious vitality within Europe;or instance, the persistence o high religiosity under monopolistic conditionsin Poland and Ireland, or the drastic decline in religiosity under relatively reeand competitive conditions in Wales or in other parts o Britain. In my view,

the American paradigm cannot even ofer a very convincing explanation o the peculiar and rather exceptional system o American denominationalism.




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Instead o ofering a comparative historical explanation, it tries to generalize itsvalid insights concerning American religious patterns into a universal theory o

religious markets.There is a sense in which both European secular developments and Americanreligious developments are unique and exceptional. In this respect, one couldcertainly talk, as Europeans have done or decades, o ‘American exceptionalism’,or one could talk, as has become ashionable today, o ‘European exceptionalism’.But both characterizations are highly problematic, i it is implied, as it was inthe past, that America was the exception to the European rule o secularization,or i it is implied, as it oten is today, that secular Europe is the exceptionto some global trend o religious revival. When it comes to religion, there is

no global rule. All world religions are being transormed radically today, asthey were throughout the era o European colonial expansion, by processes o modernization and globalization. But they are being transormed in diverse andmaniold ways.

Analytically, thereore, there can be no substitute or serious comparativehistorical analysis. One should begin by recognizing and exploring the multipleand diverse patterns o secularization within Western European Christianity.Only then can one proceed with the task o contrasting these Western EuropeanChristian developments with other non-Western, non-European, or non-Christiandevelopments. This essay is obviously not the place to attempt such a gigantic task.This is rather the task collectively addressed by the contributors to this volume,and by the conerence in which it originated, with the kind o accumulatedhistorical, civilizational and interdisciplinary expertise which no single scholarcould possibly dream o achieving. I would only like to stress, against the simpli-cations o my own discipline, sociology, that we can only hope to make senseo the complex religious situation o Europe today by reeing ourselves romthe assumptions o the traditional theory o secularization and by looking at theEuropean experience o secularization with resh eyes and with a comparative,historical and global perspective.

Let me simply ofer a series o programmatic statements in this respect:

a) It has been generally recognized that the historical patterns o secularizationin Western Europe are themselves somehow related to internal dynamics o institutionalization and transormation o Western European Christianity. Atthe very least, one must recognize that the category o the saeculum itsel is amedieval Christian theological category, which itsel served to structure thediscourse and the institutional dynamics o European Christendom rst ando European secularization later. Such recognition is important, irrespective o

whether one sees the dynamic o secularization as the internal transormationor transvaluation o Christian theological categories into secular realities or






alternatively one sees the dynamic patterns o secularization as the triumphal andlegitimate emancipation o these secular realities rom theological and ecclesi-

astical control. I am not interested at this point in evaluating the greater orlesser validity o the competing perspectives, Hegelian, Nietzschean, Weberian,Schmittian, Parsonsian, Voltairian, Comtean, Blumenbergian or Habermasian,but simply to point to the particular Christian–saecular dynamic. Other worldreligions and other axial civilizations had diferent patterns o institutionalizationor dynamic tensions between religion and world, or between immanence andtranscendence.

b) By reerring to Western Christendom, I want to emphasize that such a dynamic

o secularization is not a dynamic intrinsic to Christianity as a religion, or tothe Judaeo-Christian tradition, whatever this may mean, or to some Judaeo-Christian-Graeco-Roman synthesis, since one cannot nd such a dynamic in olderEastern orms o Christianity (Alexandrian, Antiochean, Byzantine, etc.) whichcould claim a deeper continuity with more primitive orms o Christianity or withthe Graeco-Roman civilization. Socio-historically speaking Western Christendomonly became institutionalized in the eleventh century with what Harold Bermanhas analysed as the ‘papal revolution’. This means that it is a dynamic intrinsic toLatin, but not to Eastern Orthodox, Christendom. The Investiture Conicts arethe maniestation and crystallization o this particular dynamic tension, whichwill repeat itsel in other secular spheres, such as in the medieval universities,and in economic ethical debates. One does not encounter such dynamic tensionsor conicts in Eastern Christianity.

c) I the institutional, theological and discursive legacy o medieval Christendom isshared by all Western European, i.e. Catholic and Protestant, societies, internallythe dissolution o the system o medieval Christendom associated both withthe Protestant Reormation and with the emergence o the European system o sovereign territorial states will serve to open up new multiple and diverse patterns

o secularization across Western Europe. Here, one can ortunately build uponthe classic comparative analysis initiated by David Martin in his General Theory

o Secularization. Protestantism itsel in its various conessional orms, diversepatterns o state ormation, diverse patterns o state–church–sect relations, andthe ensuing religious markets (monopoly, duopoly, pluralist, etc.) are some o the independent variables which contribute in maniold ways to diverse patternso secularization across Europe.

d) To this one should add, again ollowing David Martin, the crucial relevance

o the Enlightenment and o the various socio-political and ideological-culturalmovements deriving rom it. It is, however, imperative to view the Enlightenment




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not as a single and uniorm movement but as multiple and diverse movements.In its relation to new patterns o secularization, it is important to distinguish

at least between the British, French and American Enlightenments as well asto distinguish the related yet separate and long-lasting tradition o the German Auklärung as it became institutionalized in German philosophy and theology andin the Geisteswissenschaten.

Nevertheless, one could argue that what makes the general European situationunique and exceptional when compared with the rest o the world is preciselythe triumph o secularism as a teleological theory o religious development thathas its origins in the Enlightenment critique o religion. The ideological critiqueo religion developed by the Enlightenment and carried out by a series o social

movements throughout Europe rom the eighteenth to the twentieth century hasinormed European theories o secularization in such a way that those theorieshave come to unction not only as descriptive theories o social processes,but also and more signicantly as critical-genealogical theories o religion andas normative-teleological theories o religious development that presupposedreligious decline as the telos o history.

Three dimensions o the Enlightenment critique o religion were particularlyrelevant: the cognitive critique o religion as a primitive, pre-rational worldviewto be superseded by the advancement o science and rational thought; the politicalcritique o ecclesiastical religion as a conspiracy o rulers and priests to keep thepeople ignorant and oppressed, a condition to be superseded by the advancemento popular sovereignty and democratic reedoms; and the humanist critique o the very idea o God as human sel-alienation and as a sel-denying other-worldlyprojection o human aspirations and desires, a critique which postulated the deatho God as the premise o human emancipation. Although the prominence andpertinence o each o these three critiques may have changed rom country tocountry, each o them in various degrees came to inorm modern European socialmovements, the political parties associated with them and European theories o secularization.

In this respect, theories o secularization in Europe have unctioned as sel-ullling prophecies to the extent to which a majority o the population in Europecame to accept the premises o those theories as a depiction o the normal stateo afairs and as a projection o uture developments. The premise that the moremodern and progressive a society becomes the more religion tends to declineassumed in Europe the character o a taken-or-granted belie widely shared notonly by sociologists o religion but by a majority o the population. The postulateo progressive religious decline has become part o the European denition o themodern situation, with real consequences or church religiosity.

In my view, this is one o the key actors in explaining the drastic andprecipitous decline o religious practices in post-Second World War Europe,






a decline that should not be understood as simply the nal cumulative efecto a long-term process o progressive decline correlated with processes o

modernization. The orced secularization rom above instituted by communistregimes is an altogether diferent phenomenon, although the Marxian critiqueo religion is o course itsel closely related to the Enlightenment critique.The other equally inuential actor was probably the institutionalization o welare states across Western Europe, insoar as these entailed a transerenceo collective identication rom the imagined community o the nationalchurch, or o the conessional community in multi-conessional contexts, tothe imagined community o the nation-state. This is perhaps the most plausibleexplanation or the two most dramatic cases o decline, namely Britain and the

Netherlands. In the case o Britain we have a clear transerence o identicationrom the churches o England, Scotland and Wales to the United Kingdom. InHolland the drastic secularization is undoubtedly related to the collapse o thepolarized secular/religious multi-conessional lie-worlds. Though perhaps lessdramatically, the same process took place in ormer West Germany. OutsideEurope, Quebec ofers equally dramatic evidence o this transerence rom theCatholic Church as the traditional carrier o Quebecois national identity tomodern secular separatist nationalism. The cantonal structure o Switzerlandand to a certain extent its neutrality and somewhat provincial isolation romthe rest o Europe have probably protected the Swiss churches rom similarsecularizing consequences.

The culture o the 1960s itsel and the critique o all types o institutionalauthority, as a general global modern phenomemon, was probably an additionalcrucial contributing actor to the drastic processes o European secularization.But it is instructive to compare the diferent efects that similar processes hadin secular Europe and in religious America. All the processes and movementso the 1960s – the counter-culture, the student rebellion, the revolution ingender/sexual roles and norms – were certainly as radical and, probably, evenmore anti-establishment in puritan Protestant America than anywhere in Europe.

The close association o those movements with the anti-Vietnam War movementand with the Civil Rights and Black Power movements makes the 1960s oneo the most radical and transormative decades in the history o the UnitedStates, comparable only to the Revolution and War o Independence and to theAbolition movement and the Civil War. Yet, as so oten happens in Americanhistory, all these movement were intimately associated with and even carriedby religious movements and groups. Unlike in Europe, where such movementscontributed to urther secularization, in the United States they contributed not somuch to secularization as to a new radical transormation o American religion,

which has been likened to a new Great Awakening. To exempliy this one onlyneeds to enumerate the explosion o new religious movements o all kinds, the




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prolieration o ‘invisible religions’ o sel-expression and sel-realization alongwith the triumph o the therapeutic and the institutional proessionalization o

all kinds o pastoral care o the soul, the dimensions o the New Age movement,the increasing Islamization o the Arican-American community along with theincorporation o immigrant Islam as an American religion, the Protestanticationo American Latinos and the the Latin Americanization o American Catholicism,the increasing presence o immigrant Buddhism and immigrant Hinduism asparts o the normal American religious environment, and o course the publicre-emergence and the public mobilization o Protestant undamentalism.

By the end o the century, an increasing number o Americans, roughly 20per cent, will also reject organized ‘religion’, but not by converting to secularity

as in Europe, but rather in the name o a broader, more eclectic and moreecumenical ‘spirituality’ which is supposed to ofer a surer and more authenticpath to the inner sel and to the sacred. It is a movement rom ‘denomination’to ‘individual mysticism’, not to irreligion. This th o the population orms thenew sel-denominational category o ‘spiritual but not religious’. One can saelyassume, moreover, that an even larger number o Americans experience similarspiritual journeys while still belonging to traditional denominations or by joiningall kinds o new religious communities. Not accidentally, the ‘baby boomers’have been rightly characterized as a generation o ‘seekers’ who have brought aurther vanishing o the boundaries between religion, spirituality and secularitywithin as well as outside religious denominations. Such a phenomenon has actuallyalways been somewhat typical o American religion. Indeed, it has led manyEuropean observers and deenders o the theory o secularization to dismiss thephenomenon o American religious vitality as irrelevant and as invalid counter-evidence to their theory, because by their European ecclesiastical standards it isno longer ‘authentic’ religion.

It is true that similar religious trends have existed throughout WesternEurope since the 1960s, with new processes o religious individuation, as well asnew ‘invisible religions’ o sel-expression: the same new religious movements

and cults, the presence o Eastern religious traditions and spiritualities, theNew Age and reinvented pagan religions. Moreover, institutional religion inEurope, Catholic as well as Protestant, is also in ux and in motion. As DanièleHervieu-Léger has shown, ‘the pilgrim’ and ‘the convert’ are also prominent‘seekers’ in the European religious landscape. Yet all these religious phenomenahave a much weaker presence and public resonance in Europe than in the USA.A majority o Europeans have converted to modern secularity and tend to lookdown upon those who are still, or newly, religious. There is an element o at leastimplicit conversion in the process o secularization insoar as it is a conversion

to modernity, the will to be modern enlightened Europeans. In this respect,it entails the semi-conscious armation o secularity and the abandonment o






traditional religion as something that modern mature Europeans have overcomeand outgrown.

This is in my view the explanatory key in accounting or the exceptionalcharacter o European secularization. It also explains why churches and ecclesi-astical institutions, once they ceded to the secular nation-state their traditionalhistorical unction as community cults, that is, as collective representations o the imagined national communities and carriers o the collective memory, alsolost in the process their ability to unction as religions o individual salvation.Crucial is the act that individuals in Europe, once they lose aith in their nationalchurches, do not bother to look or, or actually look disdainully upon, alternativesalvation religions. In a certain sense, the explanation lies in the act that

Europeans continue to be implicit members o their national churches even aterexplicitly breaking away rom them. It is this peculiar situation that explains thelack o religious demand and the absence o a truly competitive religious marketin Europe. The culprit is not so much the monopolistic laziness o the churchesprotected by state regulation, as the American supply-side theory o religiontends to argue, but the lack o demand or alternative salvation religions amongthe unchurched, even in the ace o new enterprising yet generally unsuccessulreligious suppliers.

A post-secular Europe? The return of religionto the public sphere of European societies

I my interpretation is correct, it would explain why religion has again becomea contested public issue in Europe. It is perhaps premature to speak o a post-secular Europe, but certainly one can sense a signicant shit in the EuropeanZeitgeist. This volume and the conerence rom which it emanates are themselvesindications o new currents in intellectual and public opinion. When, over adecade ago, I rst developed the thesis o the de-privatization o religion as a newglobal trend, the thesis did not nd much resonance in many parts o Europe,

certainly not in Germany. The privatization o religion was simply taken toomuch or granted both as a normal empirical act and actually as the norm ormodern European societies. The concept o modern public religions was stilltoo dissonant and religious revivals elsewhere could simply be explained, orrather explained away, as the rise o undamentalism. But in the last years therehas been a noticeable change in attitude and attention throughout Europe. Even Jürgen Habermas speaks now o ‘religion in the public sphere’, and every otherweek one learns o a new conerence or o the establishment o a newly undedresearch project on ‘religion and politics’ or on ‘religion and violence’ or on

‘conict and dialogue’ between the world religions.The terrorist attacks o 11 September 2001 and the resonance o the




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discourse o the clash o civilizations have certainly played an important rolein ocusing European attention on issues o religion. But it would be a serious

error to attribute this new attention solely or even mainly to the rise o Islamicundamentalism and the threats and challenges which it poses to the West andparticularly to Europe. Internal European transormations have also contributedto the new public interest in religion. General processes o globalization, theglobal growth o transnational migration and the very process o Europeanintegration are presenting crucial challenges not only to the European modelo the national welare state, but also to the diferent kinds o religious–secularand church–state settlements that the various European countries had achievedin post-Second World War Europe.

The process o European integration, the eastward expansion o theEuropean Union and the drating o a European constitution have triggeredundamental questions concerning both national and European identities and therole o Christianity in both identities. What constitutes ‘Europe’? How and whereshould one draw the external territorial and the internal cultural boundaries o Europe? The most controversial, yet rarely openly conronted – and thereoremost anxiety-producing – issues are the potential integration o Turkey andthe potential integration o non-European immigrants, who in most Europeancountries happen to be overwhelmingly Muslim. But the eastward expansiono the European Union, particularly the incorporation o an assertive CatholicPoland, and the debates over some kind o armation or recognition o theChristian heritage in the preamble o the new European constitution, have alsoadded unexpected ‘religious’ irritants to the debates over Europeanization.

There is a certain irony in the whole debate, since the initial project o aEuropean Union was undamentally a Christian-Democratic project, sanctionedby the Vatican, at a time o a general religious revival in post-Second World WarEurope, in the geopolitical context o the Cold War when ‘the ree world’ and‘Christian civilization’ had become synonymous. But this is a orgotten historythat secular Europeans, proud o having outgrown a religious past rom which

they eel liberated, would preer not to remember. ‘Religious’ issues serve asirritants to secular Europeans precisely because they serve to uel ‘the glimmeringembers’ o Christian identity, while at the same time conrming the widelyshared assumption that it is best to banish religion rom the public sphere inorder to tame the passionate conicts and irrational attitudes which religion isassumed to bring into politics.

It is indeed astounding to observe how widespread throughout Europe is theview that religion is intolerant and the source o conict. The overwhelmingmajority, practically over two thirds o the population in every Western European

country, agrees that religion is ‘intolerant’, and a majority in every WesternEuropean country, except Norway and Sweden, shares the view that ‘religion






creates conict’. Interestingly enough, the Danes distinguish themselves clearlyrom their ellow Lutheran Scandinavians in both respects. They score higher than

any other European country, as high as 86 per cent, on the view that religioncreates conict, and score the second highest (with 79 per cent), ater the Swissand tied with the British, on the belie that religion is intolerant. Given their highscores on most religious indicators, the Swiss response is also interesting.

Along with most other ormer communist countries, the Poles score wellbelow the Western European average on both issues. It is not surprising,thereore, that the evangelical task which Pope John Paul II assigned to his ellowPoles, to join the European Union with the mission o re-Christianizing secularWestern Europe, is viewed diferently in Poland and in the rest o Europe. The

Polish Episcopate has accepted enthusiastically the papal apostolic assignment andhas repeatedly stressed its goal o ‘restoring Europe or Christianity’. While itmay sound preposterous and irritating to Western European ears, such a messagehas ound resonance in the tradition o Polish messianism.

Western European observers are accustomed to discount maniestations o Polish religious efervescence and Polish messianism as annoying and hopelesslyanachronistic, i not reactionary, expressions o the Polish romantically heroic,yet desperate, penchant or resisting the march o history. It happened duringthe nineteenth-century Polish uprisings and it happened during the period o the Solidarity movement. Polish and Western European developments appearedseriously out o synch. Yet in both cases the Poles conounded the prevailingZeitgeist. The rise o Solidarity and its role in the eventual collapse o the Sovietsystem radically altered the march o history and global geopolitical congu-rations. The repeatedly demonstrated power o renewal o Polish Catholicism,which should not be conused with a residual and recessive tradition, hasconounded sceptics and critics beore. It could happen again.

Given the loss o demand or religion in Western Europe, the supply o surplus Polish pastoral resources or a European-wide evangelizing efort isunlikely to prove efective. But Poland could still have an important role to play

by simply showing that a modern and ully integrated European country can stillcontinue to be a deeply religious one and thus proving the secularization thesiswrong on European soil.

While the threat o a Polish Christian crusade awakens little ear amongsecular Europeans condent o their ability to assimilate Catholic Poland on theirown terms, the prospect o Turkey joining the European Union generates muchgreater anxieties among Europeans, Christian and post-Christian alike, but o the kind which cannot be easily verbalized, at least not publicly. The paradoxand the quandary or modern secular Europeans, who have shed their traditional

historical Christian identities in a rapid and drastic process o secularization thathas coincided with the success o the process o European integration, and who




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thereore identiy European modernity with secularization, is that they observewith some apprehension the reverse process in Turkey. The more ‘modern’, or

at least democratic, Turkish politics become, the more publicly Muslim and lesssecularist they also tend to become. In its determination to join the EU, Turkey isadamantly staking its claim to be, or its right to become, a ully European countryeconomically and politically, while simultaneously ashioning its own model o Muslim cultural modernity. It is this very claim to be simultaneously a modernEuropean and a culturally Muslim country that baes European civilizationalidentities, secular and Christian alike. It contradicts both the denition o aChristian Europe and the denition o a secular Europe. Turkey’s claim toEuropean membership becomes an irritant precisely because it orces Europeans

to reexively and openly conront the crisis in their own civilizational identity, ata moment when the EU is already reeling rom a series o compounded economic,geopolitical, administrative, scal and legitimation crises.

The spectre o millions o Turkish citizens already in Europe but not o Europe, many o them second-generation immigrants, caught between an oldcountry they have let behind and their European host societies unable orunwilling to ully assimilate them, only makes the problem the more visible.Gastarbeiter can be successully incorporated economically. They may even gainvoting rights, at least on the local level, and prove to be model or at least ordinarycitizens. But can they pass the unwritten rules o cultural European membershipor are they to remain ‘strangers’, ultimately Fremdarbeiter ? Can the EuropeanUnion open new conditions or the kind o multiculturalism that its constituentnational societies nd so dicult to accept? The question o the integration o Turkey in the EU is inevitably intertwined, implicitly i not explicitly, withthe question o the ailed integration o Muslim immigrants and, in turn, theway in which Europe resolves both questions will determine not only Europe’scivilizational identity but the role o Europe in the emerging global order.

What makes ‘the immigrant question’ particularly thorny in Europe, andinextricably entwined with ‘the Turkish question’, is the act that in Europe

immigration and Islam are almost synonymous. This entails a superimpositiono diferent dimensions o ‘otherness’ that exacerbates issues o boundaries,accommodation and incorporation. The immigrant, the religious, the racial, andthe socio-economic unprivileged ‘other’ all tend to coincide. Moreover, all thosedimensions o ‘otherness’ now become superimposed upon Islam, so that Islambecomes the utterly ‘other’. Anti-immigrant xenophobic nativism, the conservativedeence o Christian culture and civilization, secularist anti-religious prejudices,

A controversy has erupted in Germany because Oscar Laontaine, the let Socialistleader, dislikes the euphemism Gastarbeiter (guest workers) and preers to call immigrantworkers Fremdarbeiter (oreign workers), the term used during the Nazi period.






liberal-eminist critiques o Muslim patriarchal undamentalism, and the ear o Islamist terrorist networks, are being used indiscriminately throughout Europe

into a uniorm anti-Muslim discourse which practically precludes the kind o mutual accommodation between immigrant groups and host societies that isnecessary or successul immigrant incorporation.

Finally, the debates over the new European constitution also revealed thatreligion has become a public contested issue accross Europe. From a purelylegal positivist point o view, modern constitutions do not need transcendentreerences. But insoar as the main rationale and purpose o drating a newEuropean constitution appeared to be an extra-constitutional political one,namely to contribute to European social integration, to enhance a common

European identity, and to remedy the decit in democratic legitimacy, theconronting o issues o common European values and common Europeanidentities was inevitable.

Who are we? Where do we come rom? What constitutes our spiritual andmoral heritage and the boundaries o our collective identities? How exibleinternally and how open externally should those boundaries be? Addressing suchcomplex questions through an open and public democratic European-wide debatewould under any circumstance be an enormously complex task that would entailaddressing and coming to terms with the many problematic and contradictoryaspects o the European heritage in its intra-national, inter-European and global-colonial dimensions. But such a complex task is made the more dicult bysecularist prejudices that preclude not only a critical yet honest and reexiveassessment o the Judaeo-Christian heritage, but even any public ocial reerenceto such a heritage, on the grounds that any reerence to religion could be divisiveand counterproductive, or exclusionist, or simply violates secular postulates.

I am not trying to imply that the European constitution ought to make somereerence either to some transcendent reality or to the Christian heritage. Butone should certainly recognize that any genealogical reconstruction o the idea orsocial imaginary o Europe that makes reerence to Graeco-Roman antiquity and

the Enlightenment while erasing any memory o the role o medieval Christendomin the very constitution o Europe as a civilization evinces either historicalignorance or repressive amnesia.

The inability to openly recognize Christianity as one o the constitutivecomponents o European cultural and political identity could also mean thatEuropeans are missing the historical opportunity to add a third importantreconciliation to the already achieved reconciliations between Protestants andCatholics and between warring European nation-states, by putting an end to theold battles over Enlightenment, religion and secularism. The perceived threat to

secular identities and the biased over-reaction o excluding any public reerence toChristianity belie the sel-serving secularist claims that only secular neutrality can




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guarantee individual reedoms and cultural pluralism. What the imposed silencesignies is not only the attempt to erase Christianity or any other religion rom

the public collective memory, but also the exclusion rom the public sphere o a central component o the personal identity o many Europeans. To guaranteeequal access to the European public sphere and undistorted communication,the European Union would need to become not only post-Christian but alsopost-secular.

Finally, the privileging o European secular identities and secularist sel-understandings in the genealogical armation o the common European valueso human dignity, equality, reedom and solidarity may not only impede thepossibility o gaining a ull understanding o the genesis o those values and

their complex process o societal institutionalization and individual internal-ization, but also preclude a critical and reexive sel-understanding o our ownEuropean secular identities. David Martin and Danièle Hervieu-Léger havepoignantly shown that the religious and the secular are inextricably linkedthroughout modern European history, that the diferent versions o the EuropeanEnlightenment are inextricably linked with diferent versions o Christianity,and that cultural matrices rooted in particular religious traditions and relatedinstitutional arrangements still serve to shape and encode, mostly unconsciously,diverse European secular practices.

The purpose o this argument, as noted above, is not to imply that the newEuropean constitution ought to make reerence either to some transcendent realityor to the Christian heritage, but is simply to point out that the quarrels provokedby the possible incorporation o religious reerence into the constitutional textwould seem to indicate that secularist assumptions turn religion into a problem,and thus preclude the possibility o dealing with religious issues in a pragmaticand sensible manner.


casanova(2009)_religious situation in europe

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