| Volume 5, Number 4, October 2008 |
The EU: Neither God Nor Caesar
by Bérengère Massignon 白兰日赫·玛西农 |
Rush Hour of the Gods
by Meera Nanda 米拉·南达 |
HOW does the European Union (EU) handle the relationships between confessional faiths and the unified body that it is striving to bring about? Being inherently pluralistic, it is incumbent upon the EU to develop a new form of secularisation.
At a time when the idea of a religious revival, even “the revenge of God” (Gilles Kepel), is being spoken of across the world, Europe, marked as it is by a high degree of secularisation, would like to be seen as an “exception” (Peter Berger, (1) Grace Davie (2)).
This is the view not only of secular observers of religious development but also of many sociologists. However, analysts are divided over the scale and significance of this development: religious practice may be on the decline but religious identification is holding firm, a paradox that Grace Davie interprets as “belonging without believing”. Western European politicians, however, are reluctant to refer to religion in a political context even though, in contrast to the United States, the relationship between the traditional Churches...
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THOSE looking for evidence to back Peter Berger’s conclusion can do no better than take a closer look at the religious landscape of India, the “crouching tiger” of 21st-century global capitalism.
India today is teeming with millions of educated, relatively well-to-do men and women who enthusiastically participate in global networks of science and technology. The Indian economy is betting its fortunes on advanced research in biotechnology and the drug industry, whose very existence is a testament to the naturalistic and disenchanted understanding of the natural world. And yet a vast majority of these middle-class beneficiaries of modern science and technology continue to believe in supernatural powers supposedly embodied in idols, “god-men” or “god-women”, stars and planets, rivers, trees and sacred animals. By all indications, they treat supernatural beings and powers with utmost earnestness and reverence and go to great lengths to please them in the hopes of achieving their desires...
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| Issue 5.4 |
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A Voice to
Be Remembered
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