■ The journal Religion, State, and Society devotes its current issue (51:4–5) to the state of religion in the European Parliament (EP) and opens with the provocative observation that “The ongoing secularization of Europe…is little contested. Its outcomes, especially regarding European integration, are much more controversial.” This is borne out in several contributions, where it is acknowledged that the Christian Democratic parties that were started after World War II have gone the way of the churches into a state of decline. But it is a different matter for the Christian Democracy movement as a whole, which has “reinvented itself and remains a key actor for the future of European integration…In other words, religion has not exited European politics. It has mutated and is even more visible than ever,” editor François Foret writes. The issue is based on the second wave of the project, Religion in the European Parliament and in European Multilevel Governance, which consists of surveys of member representatives (MEPs) and country case studies (of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Spain) conducted during the 2019–2024 term of the EP.
Major concerns about acknowledging Europe’s Christian heritage that were evident in the first wave of the project (2009–2014) have shifted from legal considerations to an outright political rallying cry today by many politicians more influenced by populism than traditional Christian Democratic philosophy. Also more common among the recent respondents and EP players is the notion of “permanent crisis”—whether it is the situation in Ukraine or terrorism or immigration—that also has religious implications. Noteworthy articles in the issue include one by John Nelson and James Guth showing how Catholic and Protestant support of the EP and European Union have given way to a religious traditionalism disconnected from religiosity with much more skepticism toward these entities. But Foret points out that religious contestation by today’s political upstarts, such as Poland’s Law and Justice Party, is less explicit inside of the EP, where they may be viewed as fringe players, compared to their own countries’ public spheres and political systems where the electoral stakes are higher. That is why the case studies in this issue, particularly the ones on Poland and Italy and their populist resurgences, show much more of the ongoing “controversy” of religion in the European Union. For more information on this issue, visit: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/crss20
■ In several issues of RW over the last few years we have run articles about how nations and governments use religion in their political relations and interactions with other countries, known as “religious soft power.” The new book The Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power (Oxford, $110) does a good job of comparing different cases of religious soft power and finding some common themes and trends. The book, edited by Peter Mandaville, notes that while many international affairs specialists have downplayed or not paid attention to this development, those who are of a more “constructionist” bent (emphasizing identity, culture, and norms) have taken the concept on board in their work. The editor adds that religious soft power was initially meant to mean actions and practices of transnational religious organizations and networks that have some impact on national and international affairs. Today, governments and political leaders are just as likely to use the state to leverage religious soft power to accomplish their geopolitical goals. Mandaville also points out that Joseph Nye, who coined the term in the early 1990s, mainly used it in reference to how American interests are accomplished overseas apart from force and coercion. Today, soft power, especially the religious kind, has become even more important in a multi-polar, “post-Western” world, where the “dissolution and consolidation of new world orders are often accompanied by heightened salience of discussions and narratives about identity, values, and meaning. Religion is a major source of all of these and carries unique discursive power.”
The book’s many contributions testify to the almost universal use of religious soft power both by religious actors, such as Pope Francis, Chinese Buddhist monks, and Russian Orthodox bishops, and by prominent state leaders, such as India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Noteworthy chapters showing the multifaceted and complex nature of religious soft power include one on Israel and how its state actors collaborate with American evangelical Christians, and one on how Turkey’s religious affairs department, known as the Diyanet, is overseeing a network of Islamic charities and clergy in Europe furthering Turkish national interests. Religious tourism also plays a role in the use of religious soft power, seen most clearly in China’s rehabilitating and building new Buddhist temples. There can also be religious soft power exerted through new geopolitical alliances, as shown in a chapter on Russia’s attempt to portray itself as a center of traditional family values and reach out to other countries through such a call to activism. The final chapter of the book offers a critique of the concept of religious soft power, arguing that while its insights into international affairs are valuable, it also has its weaknesses, not least being the fact that it is not testable as to its outcomes and that many attempts to use religious soft power have not proved to be effective or successful in the real world of foreign policy.
