Transnational Religion in an Expanding Europe

Enlargement of the European Union (EU) is infusing renewed religious vitality into European political and social life through the influential role that religion plays in many of the states that have recently joined or are seeking to join the EU as full-fledged members. This vitality is, in turn, fortifying the role of religion in European politics in two closely related ways. In the first place, the close ties between religious tradition and national identity that new member-states and candidate-states are introducing to the EU hold the very real potential of reviving political recognition of the Christian, and specifically Catholic, roots of European integration. Western Europe may be said to have preserved Christianity only as glimmering embers that are not able to generate much heat, on their own. But when fanned, in very different ways, by Catholic Poland, Orthodox Serbia, or Islamic Turkey, those embers are much more likely to flicker back into flames. Second, the greater attention to religious difference that this renewed vitality implies could itself ignite political reactions and conflicts that are likely to impede the process of “Europeanization.” Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Islam are transnational religious traditions that each have their own understanding of European identity, European unity, and even of European modernity. These religious understandings and definitions, animated politically in complex ways in places like Warsaw, Belgrade, and Ankara, may not be consistent with how these concepts are defined and understood in, say, Paris, Berlin, or Brussels. As these religious traditions, and the national communities partly defined by them, are drawn more deeply into the project of European integration through enlargement, religion will also get drawn more deeply into European public life. Put another way, religion, widely presumed to have been consigned to the political margins in Europe, is now poised to play an important role in one of the most central political processes of contemporary European life.Timothy A. Byrnes is Professor of Political Science at Colgate University (Tbyrnes@mail.colgate.edu). His books include Transnational Catholicism in Postcommunist Europe, and Catholic Bishops in American Politics. Peter J. Katzenstein is the Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell University (pjk2@cornell.edu). His current research centers on issues of regionalism as well as soft power in world politics. This paper draws on the arguments that we are developing in greater detail in the two framing chapters in Byrnes and Katzenstein (2006). We would like to thank all the participants in the Mellon-Sawyer seminar “Towards a Transitional and Transcultural Europe” where these ideas took their initial shape, as well as the participants at a workshop at Colgate University in April 2004. Robert Keohane, John Meyer, Vjekoslav Perica, Sabrina Petra Ramet, Sidney Tarrow, and Scott Thomas also offered insightful comments that helped us greatly in drafting this paper, as did two anonymous reviewers of this journal. The remaining weaknesses are due to our stubbornness in not following the good advice we received.