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Religion and Secularism in the European Union

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Religion and Secularism in the European Union Université libre de Bruxelles Observatory of Religions and Secularism (ORELA) RELIGION AND SECULARISM IN THE EUROPEAN UNION Report September 2018 Caroline Sägesser Jan Nelis Jean-Philippe Schreiber Cécile Vanderpelen-Diagre RELIGION AND SECULARISM IN THE EUROPEAN UNION - Report Table of contents Foreword ........................................................................................................................ 4 I. Religious diversity and secularization in the Old World ............................................5 I.1. The secularization of the West … and of the East ............................................................... 5 I.2. The Catholic Church under the leadership of its first non-European pope .......................... 7 I.3. The increasing diversity of Christian denominations ........................................................ 14 I.4. Importance and diversity of Muslim groups .................................................................... 26 I.5. The Jewish communities of Europe ................................................................................. 34 I.6 The “newcomers” — oriental philosophies and religions / other groups ...........................37 I.7. Secular or atheist groups ............................................................................................... 38 II. Coping with diversity: impact on public policies, legislation and debates ................. 40 II.1. Religion in the public space ........................................................................................... 40 II.2. Non-discrimination, religious accommodations, neutrality ...............................................53 II. 3. Impact on state-church relationship models ................................................................... 56 II.4 Attitudes towards so-called sectarian organizations ....................................................... 66 III. Religion and school .............................................................................................. 67 III.1 Public and confessional schools across the continent: old issues, new vision? ............... 68 III. 2. Religious education in public-funded schools: towards deconfessionalization? .............. 70 IV. (Re)new(ed) religious conservatism and ethical questions across Europe ................. 77 IV. 1. Women’s rights — gender equality...................................................................................77 IV. 2. LGBT rights .....................................................................................................................81 IV. 3. Euthanasia .................................................................................................................... 88 V. Convictional organizations and the EU .................................................................... 89 V.1. Official dialogue conducted with the EU ......................................................................... 90 V.2. Intensive lobbying by religious, and non-religious, interest groups ................................. 94 V.3. Religion-based campaigns on the Internet ...................................................................... 99 V.4 Religion at the European Parliament ..............................................................................100 2 RELIGION AND SECULARISM IN THE EUROPEAN UNION - Report VI. The role of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union .................................................................................................. 103 Freedom of religion ....................................................................................................... 103 Equality and non-discrimination based on religion or belief ........................................... 109 VII. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................115 Religion in the European Union ..................................................................................... 115 European pluralism ....................................................................................................... 116 State and religion cooperation ...................................................................................... 118 Identity and societal debates ........................................................................................ 120 Managing religious pluralism ........................................................................................ 122 3 RELIGION AND SECULARISM IN THE EUROPEAN UNION - Report Foreword Since 2012, the Observatory of Religions and Secularism (ORELA) has been offering online analyses pertaining to religions and beliefs and to church-state relations, written by experts from the CIERL and various European universities. ORELA also offers a daily press review on religion and beliefs, covering Belgium but also Europe and beyond. Thanks to a network of experts in the 28 EU member states, ORELA also provides a summary of every national situation.1 ORELA has published annual reports on religion and secularism in Belgium, since 2013. Today ORELA also offers a report on religion and secularism in the European Union. This first report focuses on events that took place between January 2014 and December 2016. It has mainly been established on the basis of the ORELA press review and on analyses provided by ORELA correspondents. We hereby wish to express our most sincere gratitude to these correspondents: Ann af Burén (Södertörn University), Milda Alisauskiene (Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas), Anthony Bradney (Keele University), Giuseppe Casuscelli (Università degli Studi di Milano), Henrik Reintoft Christensen (Aarhus University), Brian Conway (Maynooth University), Michał Czelny, Marta Ordon and Michał Zawiślak (John Paul II Catholic University, Lublin), Olivier Gillet (Université libre de Bruxelles), Daniela Kalkandjieva (Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski), Henrique Machado-Jorge (Lusofona University of Humanities and Technologies, Lisbon), Julia Martínez-Ariño (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen), Konstantinos Papastathis (University of Luxembourg), Egon Pelikan (Institute for Historical Studies, Koper), Richard Potz (Vienna University), Ringo Ringvee (University of Tartu), Gergely Rosta (University of Münster), Antoinette Reuter (Centre de Documentation sur les Migrations humaines, Luxembourg), Victor Roudometof (University of Cyprus), Anita Stasulane (Daugavpils University), Agnieszka Szumigalska (Masaryk University/VU University Amsterdam), Teemu Taira (University of Helsinki), Miroslav Tížik (Institute for Sociology, Slovak Academy of Sciences), Sylvie Toscer-Angot (Université Paris Est Créteil, GSRL-CNRS), Mario Vassallo (University of Malta), Roman Vido (Masaryk University), Siniša Zrinščak (University of Zagreb), Anne-Laure Zwilling (CNRS & University of Strasbourg). 1 ORELA analyses and reports are freely accessible on this website : http://www.o-re-la.org/index.php 4 RELIGION AND SECULARISM IN THE EUROPEAN UNION - Report I. Religious diversity and secularization in the Old World At the start of the 21st century, Europe’s religious landscape is characterized by the reality of a large share of the population that no longer adheres to any religion and by the coexistence of a growing number of religious denominations, mainly as a result of immigration during the past century. I.1. The secularization of the West … and of the East Over the last decades, religious practice has been declining everywhere in Europe. The Old World appears to be the least religious region of the planet, sometimes nicknamed the “godless continent”. In January 2016, a survey conducted by a humanist organization even claimed that in Iceland, 0% of the population believed that the universe had been created by God.2 Nevertheless, people have recently questioned this trend: they claim that new migrations in the West and a newfound piety in the East — in the former communist countries — might have put an end to secularization. This view is partial and oriented: evidence shows that secularization is still progressing, that immigrants, while indeed more religiously inclined than the old-stock population, are also permeable to secularization. In November 2016, a report published by the French Institut National d’Études Démographiques (INED) indicated that religious practice among Muslim families was also declining among the younger generation.3 Twenty-five years — a generation — after the fall of communism, countries formerly part of the “atheist bloc” have digested the religious revival brought about by democracy and also display signs of secularization. Yet the European Union remains highly diversified when it comes to religious beliefs and practices, and this diversity may very well be the continent’s most significant characteristic. In 2010, a Eurobarometer poll on biotechnology sought to correlate people’s attitudes to new technologies with their religious background, asking whether or not people believed in a personal God or some sort of spirit. 4 The survey showed wide differences in the proportion of people who believed in God, ranging from 94% in Malta to 16% in the Czech Republic. Generally speaking, the southern part of the continent appears to hold a higher proportion of believers (regardless of whether they are Catholic or Orthodox) than the northern part, with the notable exceptions of Ireland (70% of believers) and Poland
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