ABSTRACT
Casanova, Kepel and others have argued that the latter-day emergence or re-emergence of troublesome issues such as these represents a significant cultural shift towards the deprivatisation, and repoliticisation, of religion.3
Numerous authors have used the term ‘resurgence’ to describe either a widespread revival of religion itself or a developing context in which religion-related issues have become newly controversial in politics.4 In the case of Western Europe there is little evidence of a resurgence of religion as such, except at the margins; rather, as Crouch points out, in terms of the conventional indicators of religious activity and attitudes there is plenty of evidence of continuing and, in some cases, steepening decline.5 The overall picture in Europe is, however, more ambiguous and varies widely from place to place; since approximately 1990 there is evidence both of religious revival (for example in Russia) and of religious decline (for example in Poland, a part of eastern Europe where the Catholic Church is no longer able to act as a vehicle for anti-regime sentiment). And there are few parts of the Continent where the presence of ‘non-traditional’ sects, cults and other unconventional religious movements has not been controversial; here the old arguments for religious liberty and tolerance have once more had to be deployed in support of the requirements of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights with its requirement for respecting freedom of thought, conscience and religion.6 It is probably no exaggeration to say that almost nowhere in Europe’s 50-odd sovereign territories are significant issues of the relationship between religious organisations, society and the state completely absent from the political agenda. Their salience and significance, as well as their precise content, varies enormously as between different religious, cultural and political contexts, however, and one of the first presenting questions is how these variations may be identified and accounted for.
