Firenze. European University Institute: Lecture series “Religion at the European Parliament: How Many Divisions?” (5 dicembre 2011)

ReligioWest Project
Lecture Series

Religion at the European Parliament: How Many Divisions?

Presented by:

Prof. François Foret
Université Libre de Bruxelles

Monday 5 December 2011, 11:00 – 13:00
Seminar Room 3 – Badia Fiesolana

Organised by Prof. Olivier Roy

Abstract

The EU has no direct competence in relation to religion but meets it as social and political issues when dealing with fundamental rights, culture, education and geopolitics. Religious questions are more and more on the European agenda due to enlargements, migrations and international crises. As evidence of the complex re-articulation between temporal and spiritual affairs at the supranational level, the EU is presented both as a “Christian club” and as a materialistic and disenchanted process based on economic interests. On these issues, political and even academic debates are frequently contradictory, framed by normative visions and do not always rely on strong empirical bases. An ongoing survey aims at testing these hypotheses by focusing on the role of religion in a key political arena. “Religion at the European Parliament” (http://www.releur.eu/index.html) investigates the beliefs of the members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and what they do with these beliefs.

Please register for this event here

ReligioWest

This project aims at studying how different western states (Europe and North America) are redefining their relationship to religions under the challenge of an increasing religious activism in the public sphere, associated with new religious movements and with Islam. This move leads to the use of a common paradigm of what a religion is, with the consequence of pushing religions, through a complex array of constraints (public order) and incentives (freedom of religion), to format themselves according to their common paradigm.

La locandina (pdf)