Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU (Jan 2007)
Christian identity of secular Europe
Abstract
Among other things, intensification of process of European integrations has imposed the need for realization and strengthening of common European cultural identity, that is for creating a new set of values, which would be common to all European citizens and which would be the basis for their permanent feeling of community and an experience of belonging to Europe as a common area. What are the chances of such a project since, on one hand, Islam is appearing in Europe as a religion that does not know secularity and, on the other hand, an important part of European inhabitants is showing the rise of anti-immigrant and , especially, anti-Islamic feelings, opposition to the presence of foreigners, fear of majorization and the loss of one's own identity and the values of European culture? The existing conflict with Islam is, most often, described as a conflict between secularized West where religion is a matter of private choice and religious (primarily Islamic) world where religion is regulating every aspect of life. However, innumerable examples all around us (starting with the fact that the time is counted according to the Christian calendar, Christian holidays and iconography, Biblical myths, moral codes, architecture, toponims-to mention only few) constantly reminds how much Christianity (primarily as a cultural tradition) is strongly present in the lives of the secular Europeans, how much is that secular context in fact permeated with Christian story. Vestiges of that past, which are all around us, are not in fact perceived as a Christian story - in meeting with European secularism such recognition comes only to "others" to whom that story is not familiar. On what premises then can such a common forum be created on which all would really feel equally at home? In this work I will try to consider possible directions in which, considering the existing circumstances, Europe could move in search of the new common denominator. Since nations, according to the nature and the sense of the idea itself of Europe without borders, can not figure as elements of cohesion (multiethnicity, turning towards market laws, obligatory decrease of sovereignty of national states towards, etc.), there are two logical possibilities: 1) Strengthening of Christian identity, that is returning to the previous paradigm, which is for Europe Christian paradigm - hence Christianity as new/old collective identity, 2) An attempt to de-fine a new type of plural secularism, that is, to establish secular society of non-Christian type that would be inclusive also for members of other, non-Christian cultures.
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