Opium notně vyčichlé? Náboženské procesy pozdní moderny v západní a východní Evropě

• Authors: Nespor Z. R.

Title variants

EN

AN OPIUM THAT HAS LOST ITS POTENCY? RELIGIOUS PROCESSES IN LATE-MODERN WESTERN AND EASTERN EUROPE

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

In this article the author presents a fundamental overview of developments in religion in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. He compares the situation in West European countries and post-Communist countries, and, referring to the literature, analyzes some central trends. He explains, particularly the longstanding paradigmatic concept of secularization, whose currently most influential proponent is Steve Bruce, and three alternative models - Rodney Stark's theory of rational religious choice, Daniele Hervieu-Leger's concept of religious memory, and Jose Casanova's version of the concept of three autonomous components of secularization (whose meeting led to a striking decline in church-based religiousness in Western Europe). The author also considers questions of secularization and the subsequent changes outside and within the established churches, their legal standing, and influence on politics, the mass media, the school system, and other areas. He also explores the development and subsequent decline in the importance of new religious movements, including positions taken against them and against immigrants' religiousness, as well as the influence of implicit religions. Whereas 'political religion' has long lost its role in shaping identity, functional equivalents of religiousness appear mainly in European secularism, which, on the one hand, has Christian roots and has also quite successfully substituted for church-based Christianity, for example in the form of a negative European identity with regard to Muslims. In Late Modern Europe, the author argues, a great number of privatized religious or spiritual forms continue to exist. They may get the attention of only a small part of the public and encourage them to participate, but their influence as a cultural milieu is much larger. In Europe these and other religious processes are not asserted with equal force; though various forms of religion or non-religion have also been entering European politics and public life, they remain controversial partly because they are expressed in different measure and form.

Keywords

EN

EUROPE; RELIGION; SOCIETY

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY
• SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 2-3
• Pages: 269-304
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Nespor Z. R.

• Z. R. Nespor, Sociologicky ustav AV CR, v. v. i., Jilska 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

08CZAAAA03637363