Culturalizing religion in Western Europe: Patterns and puzzles

Abstract

The relationship between culture and religion in Western Europe is marked by opposite, if not contradictory trends. One is the rise of ‘pure’ religion, abstracted from ethnicity and culture, which is registered particularly among immigrant minorities. This article focuses on an opposite trend of ‘culturalizing’ religion, which has occurred on the part of majority society. A prominent actor driving this trend is the high courts, which try to square the circle of living up to liberal state neutrality and acknowledging a privileged position for majority religion in society. However, the privileging of Christianity in Europe is light and largely symbolic, as I show in a contrast with the substantive privileging of Islam in Muslim-majority societies. If applied to immigrant Islam, culturalization still has exclusive implications, as it removes the respective practices from the ambit of religious liberty protections.