Religion and National Identities in an Enlarged Europe

W. Spohn, M. Koenig, W. Knöbl, W. Spohn, M. Koenig, W. Knöbl

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349596553, 9780230390768
• eBook ISBN: 9780230390775
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume analyzes changing relationships between religion and national identity in the course of European integration. Examining elite discourse, media debates and public opinions across Europe over a decade, it explores how accelerated European integration and Eastern enlargement have affected religious markers of collective identity.

1

Religion, Nationalism, and European Integration: Introduction

Matthias Koenig and Wolfgang Knöbl

Who would have thought that claims of secular humanist parents in Northern Italy to have crucifixes removed from classrooms in public schools would result in Europe-wide controversies over the legitimacy of religious signs as symbols of national identity? The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg – where these claims were adjudicated after exhaustion of domestic remedies – initially argued, in 2009, that the obligatory display of crucifixes in public schools violated both the state’s duty to neutrality and parents’ and children’s rights to freedom of religion. Prompting broad-scale counter-mobilization by various member states (mostly Orthodox), Catholic lawyer associations, and Protestant nongovernmental organizations, this chamber judgment in what is known as the Lautsi v Italy case was overturned by the same court’s Grand Chamber in 2011, now arguing that the crucifix was a ‘passive’ religious symbol to which the Italian government could legitimately give ‘preponderant visibility’ (for discussion, see Tempermann 2012). Religion, or so the Lautsi saga suggests, has become a highly visible, if contested, marker of national identity in seemingly secular Europe.

This book aims to analyze changing relationships between religion and national identity in the course of European integration. How do European institutions, such as the European Court of Human Rights – but ever more importantly the European Union with its legal, political, and administrative apparatuses – affect religious markers of collective identity? More specifically, are these institutions conducive to reducing the salience of religion in constructions of national identity? Do they prompt the reactive reaffirmation of religious nationalisms? Or do they lead to the re-embedding of religious components of collective identity within broader transnational or civilizational frameworks? To discuss these questions, the book presents the results from cross-national comparative research on elite discourses, media debates and popular opinions during the period of accelerated European integration, 1990–2010.¹

In this introductory chapter, we specify the overarching research problem in greater detail and outline the explorative research agenda pursued throughout this book. First, we review some secularist assumptions in the literatures on nationalism and European integration – assumptions that have long prevented social scientists from capturing the complex configurations of religion and national identity but have recently undergone thorough revision. Second, we present a conceptual framework which, drawing on constructivist theories of collective identity, on historical-comparative macrosociology, and on more actor-oriented studies of symbolic boundary dynamics, sensitizes to the dynamic relationship between religion and national identity in the course of European integration. Third, we describe the book’s explorative research design which is centered on in-depth case studies of strategically selected countries – Germany, Poland, Greece, and Turkey. Finally, fourth, we provide a brief outline of the book’s individual chapters.

1 Beyond secularization theory – recent trends in scholarship on nationalism and European integration

That religion was rather absent from studies of nationalism and European integration until recently, is without any doubt due to the strong influence of secularization theory throughout the social sciences. Under the paradigm of secularization theory, which dominated the social sciences since their founding in the late 19th century, it was assumed that the breakthrough to modernity had dramatically reduced religion’s social significance. Of course, theorists of secularization were cautious enough to conceptually distinguish several sub-processes of secularization, such as the functional differentiation of religion from other social spheres, the privatization of religion, and the decline of religious belief – to evoke José Casanova’s (1994) well-known distinction (see also Dobbelaere 1981; Tschannen 1991). But at their common core, the theorists all assumed traditional religion to be principally opposed to the normative promises and institutional realities of modern society and, hence, to lose social significance in the process of modernization. These modernist assumptions have recently, however, been challenged from a number of vantage points. In line with broader attacks against teleological modernization theories, opponents of secularization theory have criticized the master-narrative in all its sub-processes, highlighting phenomena such as the resurgence of religious belief (Berger 1999), public religion (Casanova 1994), and the historical contingency and variability of differentiation patterns (Gorski 2000a; Casanova 2006; Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt 2012). Moreover, authors such as Charles Taylor (2007) have prominently suggested that classical secularization theory is so intricately linked with the epochal self-understanding of modernity that it is ill-placed to capture cultural transformations affecting the status of religion in contemporary societies. This is certainly not the place to review the recent controversies over secularization theories in their full complexity (for a review, see, e.g., Gorski and Altınordu 2008; Koenig 2011). What is important to note, though, is that these controversies have rendered obsolete some of the modernist or secularist assumptions in literatures of nationalism and European integration and, thus, have opened new vistas for studying relationships between religion and collective identity in contemporary Europe.

The historical-sociological literature on nationalism is a case in point. So-called modernist theories of nationalism, although conceding that the Reformation prepared the way for the spread of vernacular languages and for territorially grounded identities (see notably Anderson 1983), generally assumed that nationalism, itself associated with centralized territorial states and early capitalist market economies, had superseded or replaced religion (see Gellner 1983; Greenfeld 1992). So-called primordialist theories of nationalism, in turn, tended to put greater stress on ethnic roots than on religious sources of modern nationalism (see, e.g., Smith 1986). There is a long-standing tradition – at least since Emile Durkheim’s late sociology – of interpreting the nation as a form of religion in its own right (Hayes 1960), as a ‘sacred communion of people’ (Smith 2003: 25), or at least as an analogy to religious logics of identification (Hervieu-Léger 1997: 171). But the analytical leverage gained by such functional analogies between nationalism and religion has remained thoroughly contested (see, e.g., Brubaker 2012); in any event, such analogies do not provide much guidance for scrutinizing how distinctively religious ideas, institutions, and actors have influenced constructions of national identities.

Only as underlying premises of modernization and secularization theory lost plausibility did the relation of religion and nationalism move to the fore in historical and sociological scholarship (see, e.g., Rieffer 2003; Eastwood and Prevalakis 2010; Gorski and Türkmen-Dervisoglu 2013). Heavily criticizing the modernist narrative, revisionist scholars have put emphasis on the Judeo-Christian genealogy of core components of certain nationalist belief systems, such as the idea of a divine covenant or the myth of election so prominent in early British, Dutch, and North American notions of the ‘chosen people’ (Hastings 1997; Gorski 2000b, Smith 2003). Light has also been cast on the confessional origins of modern state-formation projects by showing that populations were disciplined and homogenized through close cooperation between states and the post-Reformation churches (Gorski 2003; Marx 2003). Important research has been conducted on the multiple ways, in the 19th century, in which national identities as well as imperial ambitions drew upon religious repertoires and resources (van der Veer and Lehmann 1999; Haupt and Langewiesche 2004; Schulze-Wessel 2006). And numerous studies have shown that reactions against globalization processes in the 20th century have resulted in distinctive forms of religious nationalism, notably outside the West (Juergensmeyer 1993; Friedland 2001). All these studies do not in principle undermine the claim that nationalism comes with an immanent ontology and a thoroughly secular legitimation of authority, as Brubaker (2012: 17) rightly stresses; but they do suggest that religious ideas, institutions, and actors are related in varying ways to the imagined community of the nation. If that is the case, however, the question arises as to how to account for the variable role of religion in constructions of national identity.

A growing literature addresses this question by means of in-depth analyses of carefully selected cases of religious nationalism, including in the seemingly secular European context. For instance, in her methodologically refined and theoretically insightful study on the significance of Catholicism in post-communist Poland, Geneviève Zubrzycki (2006: e.g., 208) argues forcefully that the achievement of national statehood weakened the role of the Catholic Church in defining Polish nationhood. Perhaps the most ambitious attempt of formulating a general explanatory framework comes from Philip Barker (2009). Building on Steve Bruce’s (2002: 31) notion that situations of ‘cultural defence’ can decelerate secularization processes, Barker argues that religious nationalism in Europe is conditional on the conjunction of religious boundaries and international power asymmetries. Only in countries located at major religious or confessional border regions and exposed to external political threats (as with Poland, Ireland, and Greece) did religion become a core component of nationalism (see, also, Rieffer 2003); where either of these two conditions were absent, as in England, France, and Germany, nationalism took rather secular forms. While highly parsimonious, Barker’s explanatory framework remains somewhat incomplete. One might take issue with his characterization of Western European nationalism as basically ‘secular’; English nationalism, to take just one example, drew quite strongly on confessional or broadly Christian ideas from early modernity onwards (see, e.g., Knöbl 2011). Moreover, Barker does not sufficiently specify the historical timing of macro-conditions and macro-outcomes, nor does he detail the micro-level mechanisms connecting both. And, finally, he ignores the impact that recent social transformations, including the process of European integration, may have had upon relationships between religion and national identities. There is, therefore, a need to engage in more fine-grained analyses of changing configurations of religion and national identity during times of accelerated European integration.

If assumptions of secularization theory have implicitly undergirded the literature on nationalism, they have even more strongly permeated debates on European integration. These debates, with their disciplinary center in political science, have addressed identity issues in response to growing concerns over the democracy deficit of the European Union. Consistently low participation in elections to the European Parliament and a more general lack of interest in European politics have been interpreted as indicating the absence of a European demos that could provide legitimacy for the elite-driven project of European integration. Responding to this problem, scholars have tried to assemble evidence for an emerging European identity and a European public sphere – with rather mixed results (see, notably, Eder and Spohn 2005; McLaren 2006; Checkel and Katzenstein 2009; Koopmans and Statham 2010; Risse 2010). On the one hand, it has been documented that European identity, to which Brussels elites have devoted increasing attention and promotional activities (Shore 2000), has received only limited support among the European population, with committed Europeans to be found only among transnationally mobile professionals (Díez-Medrano 2003; Fligstein 2008). In fact, European integration is perceived rather as a threat by considerable parts of the population, thus creating new cleavages between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ (Kriesi et al. 2008; Münch 2001). Some argue that European integration, the opening of borders, regional support programs, and new discourses on minority rights can even be exploited for nationalist purposes (Fox and Vermeersch 2010: 252), especially in the triangular configurations of nationalizing states, national minorities, and national homelands in post-communist Eastern Europe (Brubaker 1997). On the other hand, such limited support for the emergence of a European identity notwithstanding, authors have amassed substantial evidence for a thorough Europeanization of national identities, both at elite and mass levels. Conceptually allowing for the possibility of multiple and hybrid identities, Thomas Risse (2010: 87–103) has in that respect persuasively shown that European institutions have re-composed national identity codes through various mechanisms, such as changing interests, frequent interactions, incremental socialization, and persuasion.

The implications of these complex dynamics for religious components of national identities have, however, been addressed only hesitantly. To be sure, historians have increasingly paid attention to those Catholic elite networks upon which was based the success of the Christian Democratic–leaning European Movement in the postwar period (see Kaiser 2007). The widely cited volume by Byrnes and Katzenstein (2006) has also investigated the differential support among various denominations for the European project, highlighting inter-confessional differences between: Roman Catholicism; Lutheran Protestantism, with its strong state-church linkages; and Eastern Orthodoxy, with its autocephalous tradition. And Risse (2010: 210) has argued that while European identity discourses had long emphasized the cosmopolitan liberal project of an inclusive, secular, post-national polity, a more exclusive and ‘nationalistic’ counter-discourse has recently emphasized the Christian heritage of Europe, notably vis-à-vis Turkey (see also Minkenberg et al. 2012: 135). However, these contributions are only first steps in understanding how European integration has been affecting religious components of national identities.

In sum, while the recent turn away from implicit assumptions of secularization theory in the literatures on nationalism and European integration has significantly contributed to our understanding of contemporary re-configurations of religion and national identities in Europe, there certainly is need for more comparative analysis and room for further theory-building. Although this book clearly cannot fill this research gap, it does aim to make a modest contribution to further analysis of what appears to be an increasingly contested issue in Europe.

2 Religion in the construction of collective identity – conceptual framework

Given the explorative objectives of this book, it would be premature to start with a general theory on causes and consequences of religious nationalism or with specific hypotheses on the impact of European integration on religious components of national identities. The aforementioned state of research does, however, allow formulating a conceptual framework that may orient empirical research and stimulate further theory-building. In this section, we introduce such a conceptual framework, drawing upon constructivist theories of collective identity, macro-sociological theories of state-formation and nation-building and actor-oriented theories of boundary dynamics.

To conceptualize collective identity, we generally follow the lead of constructivist approaches in anthropology, sociology, and political science (see, e.g., Brubaker and Cooper 2000; Cederman 2001; Risse 2010: 19–36). Premised on the social psychological tenet that individuals’ senses of selfhood are socially constituted and comprise identifications with larger groups, these approaches focus on the very construction of group or collective identities. Put differently, they regard groups not as naturally given but rather as the result of complex symbolic and social processes (see, notably, Brubaker 2002). Collective identities can thus be conceived as cultural representations that define categorical groups through diacritical markers – such as territory, phenotype, language, religion, and so forth – that set normative standards of belonging and thus potentially organize social inclusion and exclusion.

While collective identities can be formulated in various domains of social life, including families, ethnic groups, classes, professions, and so forth, national identities are characterized by their close relation to sovereign territorial states. In fact, both modernist and revisionist scholars of nationalism largely agree that the presumed or desired congruence of peoplehood and statehood constitute the core idea of nationalism.

Now, there are different ways of constructing national identities. Hans Kohn’s (1944) dichotomous distinction between ‘civic-political’ nationalism and ‘ethnic-primordial’ nationalism continues to be the most widely used, if thoroughly contested, typology (see also, Brubaker 1992; Zubrzycki 2001). Going beyond this classical dichotomy, Bernhard Giesen and Shmuel N. Eisenstadt have distinguished three ideal-typical ‘codes’ of collective identity (see Giesen 1998; Eisenstadt and Giesen 1995; Eisenstadt 1998). ‘Primordial’ codes of collective identity, in which perceived differences were naturalized, erected bright boundaries of an internally egalitarian community against demonized outsiders; ‘civic’ codes, by contrast, allowed for outsiders’ successive inclusion through loyalty to shared rules and through the acquisition of shared routines; ‘universalistic’ codes, finally, even promoted outsiders’ inclusion through education or conversion. With its equation of peoplehood and statehood, nationalism had an elective affinity with primordial codes of collective identity, but historical constructions of national identity often combined all three ideal-typical codes in various configurations, as Giesen and Eisenstadt stress. Their typological distinctions help in conceiving possible ways in which religion may figure in constructions of national identity. Religious differences, if seen as naturalized ethnic markers, can strengthen primordial constructions of national identity, as early nationalist discourse on ‘chosen peoples’ amply suggests. By contrast, civic-political constructions of national identity, while sometimes infused with religious language as in discourses of ‘civil religion’ (Bellah 1967), are typically couched in secular terms. Beyond this often-used dichotomy, religion can, finally, provide repertoires for universalistic constructions of collective identity that, whether complementing or competing with other universalisms such as the discourse of human rights, might supersede ethnic or even national divisions of the social world.

Having sketched in brief fashion the constructivist approach to collective identity, we turn to the question how to explain the variable role of religion in constructions of national identities. Evidently, it is beyond the scope of this introductory chapter to discuss this question in appropriate depth; after all, this book’s prime objective is not to formulate a general theory of religious nationalism, but to explore the much more circumscribed question of how recent processes of European integration have altered religious components of national identity. To identify potential relationships between religion and national identity, however, it is useful to review broader explanatory arguments that can be adapted to our specific research question. We here distinguish two different lines of argumentation. The first builds on the tradition of historical-comparative macro-sociology, where it has been suggested that variations in state-formation and nation-building are indeed intricately linked with religious histories. In Stein Rokkan’s (1970 and 1999) account, for instance, confessional traditions provide a major background to political cleavage structures that emerged in European states and thus shaped constructions of national identities. According to David Martin (1978), these cleavages translate into various church–state ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Religion, Nationalism, and European Integration: Introduction
• 2  The (Fragile) Normalization of German Identity Within Europe
• 3  Changing Frameworks of National Identity in Post-communist Poland
• 4  Greek Identity and Europe: Entanglements and Tensions
• 5  Turkey in Europe, Europe in Turkey: History, Elites, and the Media
• 6  Religious Dimensions of National and European Identities: Evidence from Cross-national Survey Research
• 7  Varieties of Religious Nationalism
• Primary Sources
• References
• Index