Three Concepts of Secularism and the Nature of European Integration

The objective of this paper is to shed further light on the nature of European integration by examining the relationship between religion and politics throughout the whole process. A historical institutionalist perspective is deployed here to identify critical junctures with respect to the relationship between religion and politics in the process. In this paper, I will concentrate on the controversy over the preamble to the European Constitution and the subsequent adoption of the Lisbon Treaty with its framework for contacts between political and religious institutions. I will analyse reasons behind the refusal to accept Invocatio Dei in the Constitution and the acceptance of Article 17 of the Lisbon Treaty. This debate enables us to identify key actors of the struggle for cultural hegemony within the European Union.

My preliminary findings indicate that three concepts of secularism, rooted in the European intellectual and political history, might be identified in the discourse and practice of European integration. 1) Christian-democratic secularism – Christianity transformed by personalist thought is regarded as a cultural and symbolic basis of European integration; 2) Laicist secularism - religion seen as a threat to the democratic political order; 3) Agnostic secularism – understood as an attempt to depoliticize religion, to delegate it to other bodies, e.g. the Member States or international organizations. Secularism is understood here in a broad sense: as a public settlement between politics and religion. I argue that the last concept, liberal in its nature, has been most successful throughout the whole process.