The Social and Political Role of Religion in Europe: the Demand for Christian Identity
https://doi.org/10.23932/2542-0240-2018-11-4-46-64
Abstract
Inthearticleanalyzedthesocial and political role of Christian churches, their position in Europe from the pint of view of statistics and presence of the faith-based organizations in the society. The author made a conclusion that the politicized Christianity on the European continent tied with the preserving of the role of Christian churches in the social structure as with the secularizationthatdidnotbecomedesecularization (thereturningofreligiontouchedonlyLatin America,Africa,Asia)andcreatedthevacuum of identity. The weakness of the modern Western European society in its capacity to defend and express the identity forced politicians to seek the support from Christian worldview. Different confessions demonstrated stable development and social mobility in the period of the formation of EU structures. The European politicization of Christianity became the part of the world process of the transfiguration of the religion into a way of the self expression of multiple identities in the circumstances of the inevitable globalization and becoming of the democracy as the optimal form of the social existence. The basic features of the process: the high number of church affiliated (faith based) civil organizations, network church activity, the possibility to reflect various forms of identity in a frames of the Christianized democratic structures.
About the Author
R. N. LUNKIN
Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
PhD in Philosophy, Senior Fellow, Head of Center for Religious Studies, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of “Contemporary Europe”.
Address: 11/3, Mokhovaya St., Moscow, 125993, Russian Federation
References
1. Beaumont J., Cloke P. (2012) Faithbased Organizations and Exclusion in European Cities, University Press Scholarship. DOI: 10.1332/policypress/9781847428349.001.0001
2. Berger P.L. (2005) Religion and Global Civil Society. Religion in Global Civil Society (ed. Juergensmeyer M.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Chernyshenva O.V. (ed.) (2015) Religiya i tserkov’ v Shvetsii: ot epokhi vikingov do nachala XXI veka [Religion and Church in Sweden: from the Viking Age to the Beginning of the XXI Century], Moscow: Nauka.
4. Chislo katolikov v mire dostiglo 1,3 mlrd chelovek [The Number of the Catholics in a World Reached 1,3 bln] (2017). Sibirskaya katolicheskaya gazeta, October 24, 2017. Available at: http://sib-catholic.ru/chislokatolikov-v-mire-dostiglo-1-3-mlrd-chelovek/, accessed 01.07.2018.
5. Cooperman A., Sahgal N., Schille A. (2017) Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe. Pew Research Center, May 10, 2017. Available at: http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/ uploads/sites/11/2017/05/15120244/CEUPFULL-REPORT.pdf, accessed 01.07.2018.
6. Davie G. (2013) The Sociology of Religion: A Critical Agenda, Los Angeles; London.
7. Djankov S., Nikolova E. (2018) Communism as the Unhappy Coming. Policy Research Working Paper 8399. World Bank Group.
8. Foret F., Itçaina Х. (2013) Politics of Religion in Western Europe: Modernities in Conflict? Routledge/ECPR Studies in European Political Science.
9. Global Christianity (2011). A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population. Pew Research Center, December 19, 2011. Available at: http://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/global-christianity-exec/, accessed 01.07.2018.
10. Habermas J. (2010) Religiya, pravo i politika. Politicheskaya spravedlivost’ v mul’tikul’turnom Mir-Obshchestve [Religion, Law and Politics. The Political Justice in the Multicultural World-society]. Polis, no 2, pp. 7–21.
11. Hervier-Lege D. (2015) V poiskakh opredelennosti: paradoksy religioznosti v obshchestvakh razvitogo moderna [In the Seeking of Certainty: the Paradoxes of Religiosity in the Societies of the Developed Modern]. Gosudarstvo, religiya, tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom, no 1(33), pp. 254–268.
12. Jenkins Ph. (2007) God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis, Oxford: OUP.
13. Kargina I.G. (2015) Sovremennyj religioznyj plyuralizm: teoretiko-sotsiologicheskij analiz [Modern Religious Pluralism: the Theoretical-sociological Analysis. Doctoral dissertation], Moscow: MGIMO (U) MID Rossii.
14. Kishi K., Cooperman A., Schiller A. (2017) Many Countries Favor Specific Religions, Officially or Unofficially. Pew Research Center, October 3, 2017. Available
15. at: http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2017/09/29162847/ FULL-REPORT-FOR-WEB.pdf, accessed 01.07.2018.
16. Kulkova A. (2017) Religiosity and Political Participation across Europe. Values and Identities in Europe. Evidence from the European Social Survey (ed. Breen M.J.), London: Routledge, pp. 36–57.
17. Le Statistiche della Chiesa Cattolica. Giornata Missionaria Mondiale 2004–2017 (2017). Agenzia FIDES. Information Service of the Pontifical Mission Societies. Available at: www.fides.org, accessed 01.07.2018.
18. Mudrov S.A. (2014) The European Union and Christian Churches: The Patterns of Interaction. Discussion Paper, No. 3/14, Europa-Kolleg Hamburg, Institute for European Integration, Hamburg. Available at: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/100266/1/792631250.pdf, accessed 01.07.2018.
19. Orthodox Christianity in the 21st Century (2017). Pew Research Center, November 8, 2017. Available at: http://www.pewforum.org/2017/11/08/orthodox-christianity-in-the-21st-century/, accessed 01.07.2018.
20. Presentatione dell’Annuario Pontificio (2000). Bollettino. Sala Stampa della Santa Sede, February 5, 2000. Available at: https:// press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2000/02/05/0071/00315. html, accessed 01.07.2018.
21. Prokhorenko I.L. (2015) Ethnopoliticheskie protsessy i natsiya v menyayushchemsya mire. Ispanskij opyt regulirovaniya mezhnatsional’nykh otnoshenij i inokul’turnoj immigratsii [Ethnopolitical Processes and Nation in the Changing World. The Spanish Experience of the Regulation of the Interethnic Relations and Other Cultural Immigration]. Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, vol. 59, no 12, pp. 80–89.
22. Rubinskij Yu.I. (2013) Tsennostnye orientiry Evropy [The Value Orientations of Europe], Moscow: Institut Evropy RAN.
23. Stepan A. (2001) The World’s Religious Systems and Democracy: Crafting the “Twin Tolerations”. Stepan A. Arguing Comparative Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 213–254.
24. Stepan A. (2003) An “Arab” More Than “Muslim” Democracy Gap. Journal of Democracy, vol. 14, no 3, pp. 30-44. DOI: 10.1353/jod.2003.0064
25. Steven M. (2009) Religious Lobbies in the European Union: from Dominant Church to Faith-Based Organisation? Religion, State and Society, vol. 37, no 1–2, pp. 181–191. DOI: 10.1080/09637490802693981
26. Teylor Ch. (2017) Sekulyarnyj vek [Secular Age], Moscow: BBI.
27. The Changing Global Religious Landscape (2017). Pew Research Center, April 5,
28. Available at: http://www.pewforum. org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/, accessed 01.07.2018.
29. The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050 (2015). Pew Research Center, April 2, 2015. Available at: http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/, accessed 01.07.2018.
30. Zabaev I., Oreshina D., Pruckova E. (2014) Sotsial’nyj kapital russkogo pravoslaviya v nachale XXI v: issledovanie s pomoshch’yu metodov sotsial’no-setevogo analiza [Social Capital of the Russian Orthodoxy in the Beginning of XXI Century: the Research Based on the Methods of Social-network Analysis]. Gosudarstvo, religiya, tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom, no 1(32), pp. 40–66.
Review
For citations:
LUNKIN R.N. The Social and Political Role of Religion in Europe: the Demand for Christian Identity. Outlines of global transformations: politics, economics, law. 2018;11(4):46-64. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.23932/2542-0240-2018-11-4-46-64
Views:
1144
Email this article 