Towards a Recognition and Dialogue: Secularism in Europe

I. INTRODUCTIONIn Europe, there are various forms of secular recognition of religions, which combine mutual independence of the state and religion (secularism) and an explicit consideration of the place and role of religions within society (recognition). Exploring the features of religion-state relations in several European countries will allow us to both better identify each country's own logic and avoid the risk of analysing them through the prism of French secularism. In doing so, the latter, will probably appear in its singularity since European schemes combine both orientations, and recognition, which, from the French point of view, appear not to be easily compatible.Though Europe has a history of violence associated with religion or its negation,2 it also has a history of the pacification of religious and anti-religious violence.3 In other words, there is a history of the emergence of democratic societies who respected freedom of conscience and thought and who gradually built religious pluralism.This historical construction of peace and civil tolerance allows countries to organize themselves as political communities while recognizing that the plurality of religious and philosophical choices of their people was neither built in a day nor without conflict. In several European countries, this historic process is not very old: for example, the democratic transitions of the former communist bloc countries, or Spain and Portugal.4 Autonomy of politics and law from religion was an essential element of these developments.5 For each country, the philosophical, political, and religious genealogy of this process can be established. For some, this evolution was essentially made against religion in general or against a particular religion; others emphasized the contributions of the religions themselves to these changes.6 Be that as it may, thanks to the secularization of politics, religious renunciation of political power and political renunciation of spiritual power became essential features of democracy in Europe.7 Because political power has learned to renounce spiritual power and religious power has learned (and continues to learn every day) to give way to temporal power, a recognition of and dialogue about secularism in Europe is possible today. This new sharing of power creates tension and conflict that is not only normal, but essential. Indeed, an absence of tension and conflict would cause an imbalance in favour of either a religious view or, conversely, a secularist view of man and the world. It is a hallmark of democracies to leave these differences to express themselves.8The institutionalization and practices of various forms of secular recognition do not eliminate any conflicting dynamic either between the various religious and philosophical convictions, or between religious normativity and secular normativity.9 Many national identities in Europe have been and remain marked by religious dimensions; this is particularly clear in countries where a large majority of the population identifies with a religious tradition that is related to the affirmation of national sentiment (e.g. the Orthodox Greece, the Lutheran Denmark, and the Catholic Ireland).10 Even if, in each national society, there is a real religious and philosophical pluralisation of people and acceptance of the convictional options at the individual level, the national and European levels themselves are less secularized than we might think. This lack of secularization was recently demonstrated in the Swiss vote on minarets in 200911 as well as the Lautsi case concerning the presence of crucifixes in classrooms in Italy in 2011.12The state-religion relations, as they were historically constructed in each country, have become significant elements of each state's national identity. The way the states related to their gods, or rather those who claim to represent them, became an essential part of their political identity. …