Twenty years after 9/11 and over 30 years after the Rushdie Affair, Europe is still grappling with contending forces and dilemmas within their public institutions and national identities:
- Christian churches are still privileged, albeit in varying ways, Christianity or its legacy suffuses most national cultures and public spheres
- Many European countries are multi-faith, with Islam often the second religion now whilst Christianity continues to decline even at the level of personal identification
- The long term and accelerating secularisation shows no sign of slowing down and some countries already have a non-religious or ‘Nones’ majority
In this situation, one of the key questions about the future is what will be the permutations, the alliances and the dynamics across this triangle. For example, will it take the form of Pope John-Paul II’s idea that the main dividing line is between religions, especially Abrahamic, and the non-religious? Or more like that expressed by Pope Benedict, who saw Christianity and the secular tradition of Enlightenment as sharing the same conception of Reason, from which Islam was excluded? Or is it the fate of Christianity to become a spiritually drained national or European identity, as is already visible in the neo-nationalist, populist far right?
*This article is based on ‘Managing Religious Diversity in Europe’ by Thomas Sealy (University of Bristol), Tina Magazzini (European University Institute), Tariq Modood (University of Bristol and Anna Triandafyllidou (Ryerson University, Toronto) to appear in Grace Davie and Lucian Leustan (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Europe, Oxford University Press.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under the GREASE project (grant no. 770640) and the BRaVE project (grant no. 822189).
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