Introduction

‘Religion’ is a uniquely fraught subject in many European societies. Much of the public anxiety surrounding religion can be attributed to the influence of the secularist vision of history that arose amongst European intellectuals during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the simplest level, this historical vision revolves around the expectation that modernizing forces will cause the general marginalization, decline and
eventual disappearance of religion. Those Europeans who have become habituated to this way of viewing the world therefore tend to consider religion a topic of only secondary importance, and see it more as a problematic feature of society that ought to be actively managed and contained than as a perennially dynamic force that can be tapped and channelled towards the creation of important social goods. Additionally, the
secularist understanding of religion emerged during a time of European dominance in global affairs and of declining Christian influence within Europe (Eberle 2002). Secularization theory thus tends to define religion in terms of European (and American) experiences and characteristics of the Christian tradition.