ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises the religious context in modern Europe, and the factors that must be taken into account if this is to be properly understood. It explores the reasons for religious illiteracy in this part of the world and the negative consequences that follow from this. The chapter introduces two specific responses to this situation, recognising that the response to religious illiteracy – religious literacy – is not a unitary concept. Churches that were excluding and exclusive in the early modern period have had, bit by bit, to learn to live with difference as religious minorities established themselves all over the continent. The co-existence and gradual rebalancing of two religious economies, which are in partial tension but also overlap, captures a great deal about the religious situation in Europe since 1945. The Religious Literacy in Higher Education Programme was established in England and Wales in 2010.
