Introduction about contemporary religious pluralism - For teachers

Over the last three decades, new forms of religious plurality have extended in Europe, particularly in Central, Western Europe, more recently in Southern countries like Italy, Spain or Portugal. This new religious plurality is mostly an effect of migrations from Asian, African or South-American countries, so its intensity and its progression follow the routes of economic or political migrations [See the Digital Module on Religions, Migrations and Minorities]. The comparison between the three documents gives a better understanding of this phenomenon.

Traditionally, most of European countries have a preponderant Christian history (at least until the processes of secularization and/or laicization which have appeared for the beginning of the 19th century). Thus before the present time, religious plurality is primarily a denominational plurality between the three major branches of Christianity: Orthodox Christianity, inheritor of the Eastern Roman Empire (and for this reason mostly present in Greece, Russia, Ukraine, and the Balkan countries), Roman Catholicism, inheritor of the Western Roman Empire, and Protestantism which appeared after the split of the Reformation (16th c.). Outside Christianity, Judaism and Islam have been also present on the European territory but under different modalities : Judaism always is present as a minority (even if Jews constituted a strong minority on the territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, then split – 18th c. – between Russia, the Austrian Empire and Germany). [See Digital Module on JudaismI. History of Judaism]; Islam is present as a majority in two countries only (Albania, Kosovo), or as a minority in regional parts of Russia or parts of Balkan States (Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece) (as shown on map 2a): the map of Muslim traditional presence in Europe is a sequel of the Othman domination in South-Eastern Europe (15-19th c.) and of Turco-Mongol (Tatar) presence in Russia and Poland in the Middle-Ages.
The map 2b shows the contemporary presence of Muslim people in Europe: contrasting the two maps allows us to understand that new countries of settlement are countries with the higher rates of migrants like France, Germany and Sweden, then Great-Britain. In France and Great-Britain, Muslim migrants were already numerous in the 50-60s thanks to both a higher level of industrialization and a colonial history in the Muslim world. For Germany, routes of migration are rather based on economic reasons. In Southern countries, economic migrations were more recent: from the 80s or 90s (see below Section 2). Other countries, like Sweden, have traditionally implemented a welcoming policy toward political refugees [see Digital Modules Islam I.History of Islam, sec 10]
Comparison between the two maps allows to eliminate a false conception according to which European Muslims only are migrants or from migrant ancestry.
The situation of Muslims in Europe is thus different from the one of other Asian religious communities: Hinduism and Buddhism do not have old roots in Europe: except the case of converts to these religions, most of faithful are migrants or descendants of migrants coming from India or from other Asian countries [link with Buddhism and Hinduism modules].

Religious diversity is only one axe of cultural differences in the European landscape alongside with ethno-national diversity. In the past (notably in medieval and Early modern ages), the denominational boundaries between the Catholic or “Latin” world, and the Orthodox or “Greek” world, then, after the Reformation era, between Catholic and Protestant Europe, were major divide lines in Europe and the source of numerous identity conflicts (the utmost level of conflict being the so-called “War of religions” which devastated countries like Germany and France in the 16th c. and played a role in the affirmation of political power – the king – as a warrant of civil peace, an evolution theorized as “absolute monarchy”). Plurality in religion was a matter of fact but for long centuries the full recognition of this plurality (called “pluralism” stricto sensu) was not accepted (even less favoured) by the policies of European nation-States.
From the end of the 18th century, religious toleration began to prevail in the most advanced countries (Great-Britain, France, Austria), but religious toleration should not be equalled with religious pluralism: it is only the absence of religious persecution, and does not necessarily preclude religious discrimination.
All along the 19th century, secularization processes have weakened denominational conflicts (except in specific cases, like in Northern Ireland, where religious identity was used as a symbol of national identity with an equivalence laid between “Catholic” and “Irish”, on one side, “Protestant” and “British loyalist” on another side). Moreover, European States gradually have recognized equal religious rights to all citizens whatever their religious affiliation or absence of affiliation, this (it should be emphasized) in spite of the privileged status sometimes given to a specific denomination in some countries like Britain with the Church of England, or Nordic countries with the Lutheran Church. Thus beyond a great diversity in the modes of relationships between the State and the religions, a democratic model of equal rights has progressively spread throughout Europe: religious pluralism was adopted as a constitutional principle by most of European states’ legislation. In the present, we can observe a convergence of democratic models of regulation of religion by the liberal State in Europe which give guarantees to the functioning of religious pluralism.

The new European landscape

From the 70s, a new European landscape regarding the place and diversity of religions and denominations has appeared. Religious forms of belonging, practice and belief have become ever more diversified rendering religious diversity one of the dominant axes of in European cities. This diversification is mainly the result of two processes: first, the growth of religious movements and new spiritual currents thanks to a liberalization of what is called by sociologists a “religious market” and to the expansion of consumer society which modifies religious demands; and second, the growth and increasing internal differentiation of the religious traditions of migrant groups. According to the estimates of the United Nations Population Division, the number of migrants in the world has grown in the last 50 years from 80 million to 214 million, shifting from 2.6 to 3 % of the world population. A report published in 2012 by Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows that nearly half of these migrants are Christian (49 %), 27 % are Muslim, 5 % Hindu, 3 % Buddhist, 2 % Jewish, while 4 % belong to other religions and 9 % are unaffiliated. The millions of migrants who have moved from one part of the globe to the other have brought with them, besides the hope to better their own and their families’ life conditions, the culture, the values, the traditions and the religions of their countries of origin. No doubt the place where such changes are more noticeable are the big cities: it is here that the highest concentration of immigrant people are recorded, and there is no Western town that has not experienced a profound re-configuration due precisely to the migratory flows in the last two decades.
Researchers interested in these processes of religious change have sought to analyse the ways in which these new diversities are folded into institutional arrangements, the fabric of everyday sociability and hegemonic definitions of collective, especially, national identities, and traced the effects of this in diverse areas. To make the situation even more complex, there are “multiple secularities” whereby distinctions between religion and the secular are defined while the idea of balancing and accommodating religious diversity is fundamental for animating public debates in which notions of secularity are unsettled, contested and recomposed. Recent interdisciplinary studies devoted to the subject have raised several questions of interest to a historical-religious perspective, aim for new thinking about urban space and social relations, cultural and religious traditions that animate and come alive within. The readjustment is significant since religious dynamics in today’s global cities and major urban hubs often differs dramatically from those of the nation-state.
Considering the social function of religious places, it is increasingly clear that they must be read not only as consensual practices but mostly as ‘contested spaces’ for ownership, negotiation, creation of the symbolic resources of a society. In this way, urban space became the field in which conflicts and boundaries, that otherwise would remain hidden, show themselves; religious communities asking through architectural interventions, often arise conflicts related to building permissions, processes of public recognition, and public display of religious rituals. In our societies religions ‘appear’ in places previously not envisaged and places take on at times, new and unusual forms. Religious pluralism is the “normal state of affairs,” and this is so not only because religion is a multidimensional reality, but also because the institutions that govern it are manifold, both from within the religious field itself and outside it. Even more, the focus on religious pluralism has made visible the religious traditions that have been present for centuries in countries where the religious market was monopolized by a single religion which, with its shadow, made all the others invisible. Even in Europe, where there is a marked decline of religious practices, the fall of the priestly ordinations and the emancipation of the faithful from the official teachings of the churches on ethical issues, we also can record from at least the 1980s forward, a great proliferation of new religious movements, and more recently, under the influence of increasing migration, we can also record an unprecedented proliferation of multi-religious presence even in countries such as Italy, where the management of the religious market was monopolized by a single majority religion.