ATHENS, Greece (AP) - More than a century ago, France passed a landmark law declaring a clean break between church and state. Riots erupted and a papal encyclical denounced the 1905 act as a "most pernicious error."
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(Photo: Reuters / Fabrizio Bensch, File)German Chancellor and Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party leader Angela Merkel gestures as she visits the venue for the upcoming party congress in Dresden November 26, 2006.
Such extreme passions long ago cooled. But the core questions remain as strong as ever. Debates over religion, politics and civic life — and how much they should overlap and interact — are demanding attention across Europe in ways more pressing than at any time in recent decades.
It's no longer just about whether to untangle or preserve the old relationships between the secular and spiritual — often only symbolic these days, but still an important stream of revenue for churches.
New fronts are emerging: Traditionalist groups seeking a closer embrace of Europe's Christian heritage, and others predicting that efforts to better integrate Muslim communities will also require new models for the role of religion in public life.
"Religion — for good and bad — is reasserting itself as a force in Europe," said Gerhard Robbers, a professor of political and religious studies at Germany's University of Trier. "The period of secularism is coming to an end. A new landscape is emerging."
But many would argue it's a very uneven terrain.
The European Union's center of gravity is no longer solidly in northern Europe, where church attendance and religious influence are in freefall.
When the EU expanded in 2004, it inherited a swath of Eastern Europe where churches — particularly the Roman Catholic and Christian Orthodox — have been reasserting their voices in civil affairs after being sidelined for decades by communism. Two of the other newcomers have deep church-state bonds: Malta with Catholicism and the Greek-speaking zone of divided Cyprus with the Orthodox church. Two more predominantly Orthodox nations, Bulgaria and Romania, will enter the EU fold in January.
In Poland, another new EU member, top government officials have been guests on a popular Catholic radio station, Radio Maryja, whose ultraconservative views and commentary on political affairs and relations with Jews has drawn criticism from the Vatican.
Many of the new EU states were among the strongest voices in the unsuccessful effort to add a mention of God or Christianity in the EU constitution, which was effectively mothballed after rejection last year by voters in France and the Netherlands. The EU hopes to restart the ratification process, with some officials setting a target of 2008.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said this year that "Christianity has formed Europe in a decisive way" and should be reflected in an eventual constitution.
In a joint declaration last month in mostly Muslim Turkey, Pope Benedict XVI and the spiritual leader of the world's more then 250 Orthodox, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, stressed the need to "preserve Christian roots" in European culture while remaining "open to other religions and their cultural contributions."
Such messages resonate with some rightist political groups, such as Austria's Freedom Party or the British National Party, which increasingly see pro-Christian platforms as a way to tap into public anxiety over growing Islamic communities and Turkey's bid for EU membership. Continue >>
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