Religion and the Struggle for European Union

Confessional Culture and the Limits of Integration

Brent F. Nelsen, James L. Guth

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781626160705, 9781626162006
• eBook ISBN: 9781626160712
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion, Politics & State

In Religion and the Struggle for European Union, Brent F. Nelsen and James L. Guth delve into the powerful role of religion in shaping European attitudes on politics, political integration, and the national and continental identities of its leaders and citizens.

Nelsen and Guth contend that for centuries Catholicism promoted the universality of the Church and the essential unity of Christendom. Protestantism, by contrast, esteemed particularity and feared Catholic dominance. These differing visions of Europe have influenced the process of postwar integration in profound ways. Nelsen and Guth compare the Catholic view of Europe as a single cultural entity best governed as a unified polity against traditional Protestant estrangement from continental culture and its preference for pragmatic cooperation over the sacrifice of sovereignty. As the authors show, this deep cultural divide, rooted in the struggles of the Reformation, resists the ongoing secularization of the continent. Unless addressed, it threatens decades of hard-won gains in security and prosperity.

Farsighted and rich with data, Religion and the Struggle for European Union offers a pragmatic way forward in the EU's attempts to solve its social, economic, and political crises.

PART I
The Framework

1
Culture and Integration

We … are heading for our objective, the United States of Europe;
and for us … there is no going back.

—Jean Monnet, Memoirs, 1976

We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level, with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels.

—Margaret Thatcher, Bruges Speech, September 1988

TWO CONTRASTING visions exist side by side in the European Union. One sees Europe as a single community that has suffered unnatural division and fraternal wars for so long that it will take generations to heal, but heal it shall. And heal it must, for global economic competition and shifting geopolitics demand that Europe face the world united. But a second vision challenges the first, resting on the judgment that a politically united Europe is dangerous—oppressive in the past, and very likely also in the future. In this view, the contemporary system of nation-states has guaranteed liberty for the peoples of Europe and should not be abandoned for a dream. European nations must cooperate in a competitive world, but cooperation is possible without undermining national sovereignty. To those with the first vision, the ideal Europe looks like a single people in a federal state, the United States of Europe; to those having the second vision, the European ideal is sovereign nations in an exceptionally close international organization.

This book explores the origins of these two conceptions of Europe, how they have divided European leaders and peoples since the early postwar years, and why the division is so persistent. It is also about the limits of European integration and the options facing a divided Europe as it looks to the future.

Our interest in this topic emerged from a simple observation: The two visions so pointedly summarized by Monnet and Thatcher in the quotations given above are not randomly distributed across the Continent, but tend to concentrate in cultural regions. Those with a federalist vision are often from areas that are now or once were strongly Catholic; those with an antifederalist vision often come from Protestant areas that broke from the Catholic Church during the Reformation. This should be no surprise. Even casual observers know that Belgium, Italy, and Spain have been full-throated integrationists, while Britain is Europe’s “awkward partner” and the Scandinavians are “reluctant Europeans.”¹ Most attribute British and Nordic orneriness to national idiosyncrasies and look no further. But we believe this pattern is a genuine puzzle that requires deeper investigation. Why are Britain and the Nordics so often the odd countries out—the integration party spoilers and the treaty opters-out? Why do they always resist deeper integration, never fully trust their EU partners, and frequently vote “no” in national referenda? This is systematic behavior that requires explanation.

We think that “culture” is the missing explanatory factor. Culture shapes ideas about what ties Europe together, who counts as “European,” where Europe ends, and how national borders matter. These questions of identity inform and shape visions of European integration. In addition, we argue that religious culture has been crucial in shaping the main approaches to integration. Specifically, we contend that the Reformation and subsequent wars of religion divided Europe over the value of political fragmentation. Catholics rejected fragmentation and remained committed to a unified Europe—Latin Christendom—while Protestants found refuge in the separate and new European nation-states. Protestant national identities were forged in conflicts with Catholicism, making it difficult for Protestant leaders—even four hundred years later—to abandon their borders.

The Reformation continues to echo (perhaps more and more faintly) across Western Europe. Cultural divisions still keep Protestants wedded to their nationstates and emotionally disconnected from much of the Continent.² The EU has much to deal with as it tries to solve fundamental economic challenges without completely alienating Protestant-majority states. Britain is already contemplating a new relationship with the EU, and others may follow. In some ways the Reformation feels like only yesterday.

Culture has to be in the equation when explaining a social phenomenon as significant as the integration of former enemy countries. Religion is a central cultural ingredient, a powerful force that grips the human heart. It would be surprising if it did not influence the integration process and the evolution of identity in Europe. This book explores that role.

The Case against Religion

Most social scientists hesitate to give religion any role in the shaping of European integration. They assume that material interests determine political attitudes and behavior; ideas, norms, traditions, and identities have little or nothing to do with policy outcomes. Individuals and nation-states alike form their opinions and take action based on some calculation of economic interest. Theoretical orientations as diverse as Marxism, Realism, and rational choice theory take materialism as a basic starting point. Systems theories and pluralist (or “group”) theories are less explicit, but also tend to focus on materially derived system functions or interests. Thus, most theoretical perspectives in the social sciences consider religious ideas and motivations as little more than window dressing, hiding the desire for greater power or wealth.

The study of European integration has followed this track, discounting the influence of religion on postwar decisions to integrate. Granted, scholars explaining the development of community law have sometimes identified religious influences on key legal principles. Joseph Weiler, for instance, points out the impact of Catholic social thinking on the development of subsidiarity and other doctrines.³ Federalists and most legal theorists, however, are not usually seeking to identify the causes of integration but rather concern themselves with the building of its legal foundations. Rational choice theorists and institutional analysts, conversely, do try to explain European integration and explicitly adopt materialist assumptions. They model the behavior of the European Union’s member states and governing institutions at all levels by assuming that rational actors make choices based on calculations of material benefit.

Perhaps the strongest challenge to the notion that religion matters to the European Union comes from “intergovernmentalists.” These theorists often disagree about why European cooperation emerged after World War II, but they all conclude that national interests mattered most, and that such interests were primarily material. Alan Milward, for example, has insisted that integration, far from challenging the nation-state, actually saved it on the European Continent.⁴ Milward claimed that idealism never influenced European leaders’ decision to integrate. The economic crisis of the late 1940s had left Europe, particularly France, with no viable options except for “Franco-German association.” He saw no evidence of an ideologically driven process and delighted in mocking the notion that “idealisms” could override “national interest.”⁵

Andrew Moravcsik, drawing heavily on Milward, also contended that idealism explained very little about integration. Commercial interests, the bargaining powers of individual states, and incentives to lock in interstate commitments (sometimes by creating supranational institutions) explain “the form, substance, and timing of major steps toward European integration.”⁶ Although conceding that national preferences were sometimes shaped by ideas and by geostrategic interests,⁷ Moravcsik adamantly rejected the possibility that such factors were decisive: “To be sure, technocratic imperatives, geopolitical concerns, and European idealism each played a role at the margin, but none has consistently been the decisive force behind major decisions.”⁸

Such strong arguments cannot be easily dismissed. No credible analyst claims that economic interests had no role in decisions to integrate, or subsequent ones to expand and deepen cooperation. But the evidence presented in this book suggests a broader view. Ideas, social and political networks, and ideologically and religiously motivated groups also contributed to integration. To ignore them is to miss a big part of the story. Behind economic and geopolitical interests are cultures that shape the calculations of political elites—perceptions of who their friends and enemies are, and what options are “realistic.” Understanding culture also helps us appreciate the impact of decisions on national publics—how they are received and how they shape popular opinion. Thus, we think integration theorists should reconsider culture as an explanatory factor.

Bringing Culture Back In

Admittedly, culture is suspect. Some social scientists ignore it because the concept itself is hard to define and measure—like air, it is everywhere, but hard to pin down. Other scholars studiously avoid it because using it is fraught with danger. Considering culture requires dealing with religion, and social scientists often find that their secular training and liberal sensibilities leave them unprepared or unwilling to take religion seriously. Even leaving religion aside, culture itself has become an emotionally charged political issue. In an age of both tolerance and terrorism, cultural identity is simultaneously encouraged and feared. On one hand, all cultures are to be positively evaluated; on the other hand, some cultures seem to encourage the darker angels of human nature. Students of culture find themselves caught in the middle—accused of promoting intolerance by casting some cultures in an unfavorable light or charged with minimizing dangerous cultural elements or trends.⁹ Most social scientists choose to avoid the political minefield.¹⁰ But culture does matter, and ignoring culture, especially its religious components, often means missing the deepest story.

Of course, some social scientists have taken culture seriously. Alexis de Tocqueville and Max Weber based their most profound insights on the notion that religious culture shaped the modern world.¹¹ Their contributions, however, were largely ignored during the social scientific revolution after World War II, as the behavioral revolution marginalized culture.¹² That changed as the twentieth century came to an end.

The fall of the Berlin Wall freed intellectuals from the stultifying ideological struggle between Liberals and Marxists. Important old questions—and some new ones—could now be addressed without eliciting Cold War ideological responses. Why does underdevelopment persist? Why does authoritarianism live on? What will drive international politics in a post-bipolar world? Why do nations cooperate after the Cold War? These questions received many answers, but one prominent theme was a renewed emphasis on cultural explanations. Lawrence Harrison, for instance, argued that Latin American countries remained poor because their societies lacked the values necessary for economic and political success. Their values were rooted in a “basic world view” that differed from those in Europe, North America, and parts of Asia.¹³ David Landes applied the same insight in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: “If we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes all the difference.”¹⁴ Ronald Inglehart in Culture Shift and Robert Putnam in Making Democracy Work marshaled enormous bodies of evidence establishing the link between culture, economic development, and effective democracy.¹⁵

The study of world politics also witnessed a new emphasis on culture. Samuel Huntington’s controversial Clash of Civilizations placed culture at the very center of international p...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• PART I The Framework
• PART II Confessional Cultures
• PART III Constructing a New Europe
• PART IV Divided Europe
• Index