Revue économique 50 - 2, mars 1999

Religion has experienced a new visibility for the last fifty years, in Europe as in the rest of the world. Yet often, although it seems to be the case, it's not religion that's really being talked about.

Beyond the subject of 'religion’ this work apprehends the largest reformations which work upon the European continent across the relationship between politics and religion, shedding light on the different definitions of the just and the legitimate, of the nation and of Europe in the age of globalization. Far from privileging the 'religious key’ or by contrast the ‘political key’ as a mode of deciphering the present, it holds accountable different factors (political, economic, social, religious) for their ties and uses of which they are sometimes the object.

This approach sketches a triple rupture : with the debate of ‘borders’ in Europe, addressed here not by its limits but by its traffic and its core, with the readings created by the ‘community’ and the role religion plays in their development, and finally with the classic categories of political sociology of religion, thanks to analysis centered on the concept of belief.

A rare work offering a panorama of the question of religion in Europe.

Antonela Capelle-Pogocean is in charge of research at the CERI (Sciences Po Center of International Studies and Research), Patrick Michel is Director of Research at CNRS, linked to CERI, Enzo Pace is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Padua.