What is "Religion in Europe"?

Although ‘religiosity’ as Church attendance and religious belief is declining in Europe, cultural identification with religion has remained stable or even increased. Various studies have highlighted how national and European forms of religious heritage have been ‘appropriated’ by the far right to construe a false binary between secular Christian European states on the one hand, and Islam on the other. This presentation will argue that the focus on far right uses of religious heritage is important, but should not detract attention from how such uses are echoed in ‘mainstream’ discourses of religious heritage. Particularly, it is important to ask which widespread conceptual understandings of religion make ‘heritage status’ possible, which groups can (not) make claims to it, and how the connotations of protection and conservation attached to ‘heritage’ relate to a politics of racial and religious belonging in Europe.

The European socio-cultural concept of religion is highly diverse. In my presentation, I will
focus on the situation in Austria and argue that present-day changes will challenge the
implicit concepts of religion up to a point where they will no longer be applicable in day-to-
day use. In Austrian, the implicit concept of religion is very much dominated by the
traditional ideal of the Roman-Catholic Church – with hierarchical institutional structures,
parochial day-to-day practices and more or less clearly defined sets of beliefs (Lehmann /
Reiss 2022; Zulehner 2020; Vocelka 2013). This becomes particularly obvious with regards to
the two forms of legal status religious organizations can apply for – the status of ‘Gesetzlich
anerkannte Kirche und Religionsgesellschaft‘, as well as the status of ‘Staatlich anerkannte
religiöse Bekenntnisgemeinschaft’. First, these two forms of legal status provide different
degrees of access to a subsidiary system of religious services. Second, they are confronted
with significant challenges.