Abstract
A handbook of this sort is almost impossible to review adequately; however, as its arrival coincided with two weeks of teaching on religion and politics in the wider Europe, the first point to make is how useful it is for students and for academics teaching in this area. The editors set the scene well in the introduction, and Grace Davie’s later chapter on ‘Religion, secularity, and secularization in Europe’ elaborates on some of the themes that are discussed there and crop up across the collection. For Davie, it is important to stress the continuing cultural impact of Europe’s Christian heritage, even though the churches have a reduced influence on belief and behaviour, and the changes in the patterns of religious attachment ‘in which obligation has given way to choice’. All this has been impacted by waves of new arrivals in Europe over recent decades, people who bring to the continent both other religions and other ways of being Christian. These in turn have evinced reactions from ‘more secular constituencies’ concerned about the increased salience of religion in public debate.
The book is structured around five sections focusing on religion’s contribution to the shaping of Europe; religion and modernity in Europe over the last seven decades: the role of religion in Europe and regional organizations; questions of religious diversity in reimagining Europe; and case studies exploring particular countries or regions within the wider Europe. The third section, in which several chapters explore the role of religion within the structures of the European Union, may surprise some readers who imagine the latter as a largely religion-free zone. In practice, recent decades have witnessed attempts to include the voices of religious and non-religious world views in deliberations, with over 80 organizations enjoying some form of recognized representation in Brussels. Inevitably, there have been misunderstandings along the way, from the debates over the European constitutional preamble to tensions with Poland over its religiously inspired restrictions on abortion rights. More positive has been the role of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), whose task is to interpret the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights, and whose decisions have frequently favoured the rights of religious minorities struggling against political regimes that deny rights to some groups. One of the tragedies of the current war in Ukraine is that it has led to the excision of the Russian Federation from the Council of Europe, an understandable decision in the circumstances but one that will deprive religious minorities (and others) of their ability to defend their rights in the ECtHR.
We are yet to see the impact on European Orthodoxy of Russia’s war on Ukraine, but it seems clear that the Russian Orthodox Church’s aspirations to primacy within the tradition or influence beyond it have been destroyed in any foreseeable future by the very state that sought to promote its own vision of a distinctive Orthodox civilization. Doubtless other specialists on the areas covered might have their own takes on specific issues covered here, but overall this is a great contribution that should appeal to students, academics, religious actors and others with an interest in the role of religion in contemporary Europe.