Culturalizing religion in Western Europe: Patterns and puzzles

The relationship between culture and religion in Western Europe is marked by opposite, if not contradictory trends. One is the rise of pure' religion, abstracted from ethnicity and culture, which is registered particularly among immigrant minorities. This article focuses on an opposite trend of culturalizing' religion, which has occurred on the part of majority society. A prominent actor driving this trend is the high courts, which try to square the circle of living up to liberal state neutrality and acknowledging a privileged position for majority religion in society. However, the privileging of Christianity in Europe is light and largely symbolic, as I show in a contrast with the substantive privileging of Islam in Muslim-majority societies. If applied to immigrant Islam, culturalization still has exclusive implications, as it removes the respective practices from the ambit of religious liberty protections. Resume La relation entre la culture et la religion en Europe occidentale est marquee par des tendances opposees, voire contradictoires. L'une d'elle est la montee de la religion << pure >>, conceptualisee a partir abstraction faite de l'ethnicite et de la culture, et observee en particulier parmi les minorites issues de l'immigration. Cet article se focalise sur une tendance opposee, celle de la << culturalisation >> de la religion au sein de la societe majoritaire. Une instance importante a l'origine de cette tendance sont les hautes cours, qui s'efforcent d'equilibrer la neutralite de l'Etat liberal et la reconnaissance privilegiee de la religion majoritaire dans la societe. Cependant, le privilege du christianisme en Europe est leger et largement symbolique, comme je le montre en contraste avec le privilege substantiel de l'islam dans les societes a majorite musulmane. Applique a l'islam des immigrants, la << culturalisation >> a toujours des consequences exclusives, en ce sens qu'elle enleve des pratiques respectives l'etendue des protections de la liberte religieuse.