Abstract
In the conclusion, Ulrich Schmiedel and Graeme Smith summarize the role of religion in the current refugee crisis by suggesting that civil and notso-civil theologies have taken over the public square. Their suggestion, inspired by Robert Bellah’s concept of civil religion, points to the significance of theologies that are always already operant in the controversies stirred up by immigration into Europe. Crucially, the operation of these theologies is independent of religion, in the sense that it requires neither religious practice nor religious participation in institutions such as churches. If Europe’s public square has been taken over by theologies, the requirements for reflection on the role of religion changes accordingly. These are changes that scholars need to confront. Schmiedel and Smith sketch what such a confrontation could look like in order to point to the instructive and important avenues that the contributions to this compilation have opened up in terms of public scholarship in the current refugee crisis.
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Notes
- 1.
See the contribution to the classic, The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion in World Politics, ed. Peter L. Berger (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999). For more theological and philosophical (rather than sociological) accounts, see The New Visibility of Religion: Studies in Religion and Cultural Hermeneutics, ed. Graham Ward and Michael Hoelzl (London: Continuum, 2008). See also Ola Sigurdson’s account of political theology in the post-secular age, “Beyond Secularism? Towards a Postsecular Political Theology,” Modern Theology 26/2 (2010), 177–196.
- 2.
See Hans Joas, “Post-Secular Religion? On Jürgen Habermas,” in Do We Need Religion? On the Experience of Self-Transcendence, trans. Alex Skinner (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2008), 105–114. For Habermas’s concept of the post-secular society, see especially Jürgen Habermas, Glauben und Wissen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001).
- 3.
See Joas, “Post-Secular Religion?,” 105–114.
- 4.
Erin K. Wilson and Luca Mavelli, “The Refugee Crisis and Religion: Beyond Conceptual and Physical Boundaries,” in The Refugee Crisis and Religion: Secularism, Security and Hospitality in Question, ed. Luca Mavelli and Erin K. Wilson (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), 12.
- 5.
Saskia Sassen pointed to the return of religion as a “normative order” after the decline and denationalization of citizenship. See Saskia Sassen, Territory—Authority—Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 223. See also ibid., 403–414.
- 6.
Renée Wagenvoorde, “How Religion and Secularism (Don’t) Matter in the Refugee Crisis,” in The Refugee Crisis and Religion, 61–74, argues that Christianity functions as an identity marker for Eastern European states, while secularity functions as an identity marker for Western European states. However, in contrast to the well-worn East/West division, which he himself complicates, it is crucial to notice the overlap between Christianity and secularity throughout Europe . See Graeme Smith, A Short History of Secularism (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007).
- 7.
For the idea of ideal-types, see Max Weber, “The ‘Objectivity’ of Knowledge in Social Sciences and Social Policy,” in Collected Methodological Writings, trans. Hans Henrik Bruun, ed. Hans Henrik Bruun and Sam Whimster (London: Routledge, 2012), 100–138.
- 8.
Our usage of this conceptual couple differs from Grace Davie’s who coined it. See Grace Davie, Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).
- 9.
See Petra-Angela Ahrens, Skepsis und Zuversicht: Wie blickt Deutschland auf Flüchtlinge? (Hannover: Sozialwissenschaftliches Institut der EKD, 2017), 19–24. The study reports the results of telephone surveys conducted in four waves between November 2015 and August 2016.
- 10.
Of course, Munich is only one example. See the report in the Guardian, available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/03/germany-refugees-munich-central-station (accessed 03/2017).
- 11.
See ibid.
- 12.
For the role of faith communities, see Alastair Ager and Joey Ager, “Challenging the Discourse on Religion, Secularism and Displacement,” in The Refugee Crisis and Religion, 37–52.
- 13.
Welcoming the Stranger: Affirmations for Faith Leaders, ed. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Geneva: UNHCR, 2013).
- 14.
See Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, “The Faith-Gender-Asylum-Nexus: An Intersectionalist Analysis of Representations of the ‘Refugee Crisis,’” in The Refugee Crisis and Religion, 207–221.
- 15.
See ibid. See also Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, The Ideal Refugee: Gender, Islam and the Sahrawi Politics of Survival (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014).
- 16.
Wilson and Mavelli, “The Refugee Crisis and Religion,” 7.
- 17.
See, again, Weber, “The ‘Objectivity’ of Knowledge in Social Sciences and Social Policy,” 100–138.
- 18.
For the statements of the Hungarian Bishop, see the report in the Washington Post from 2015, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/hungarian-bishop-says-pope-is-wrong-about-refugees/2015/09/07/fcba72e6-558a-11e5-9f54-1ea23f6e02f3_story.html?utm_term=.c937b24a191d (accessed 03/2017).
- 19.
Of course, the difference between “religious” and “non-religious” practice is a contested issue. What we have in mind here are practices that come with the participation in institutions like churches, such as the celebration of services, for instance.
- 20.
See the classic, Robert Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Daedalus 96/1 (1967), 1–21.
- 21.
See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, trans. Christopher Betts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 158–167.
- 22.
See Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” 5–9.
- 23.
Ibid., 3. For the controversies caused by Bellah’s concept, see Marcella Cristi, From Civil to Political Religion: The Intersection of Culture, Religion and Politics (Waterloo: Wilfried Laurier University Press, 2001); Gerald Parsons, Perspectives on Civil Religion (Farnham: Ashgate, 2002). See also the study of the role of religion in the “English Defence League” by Joel Busher, “From Ethnic Nationalism to Clashing Civilizations: Reconfigurations of (Un)Civil Religion in an Era of Globalization,” Religion Compass 6/9 (2012), 414–425.
- 24.
Gert Pickel discusses Samuel Huntington’s concept of the clash of civilizations. For its impact on the public square, see also Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, A Meta-History of the Clash of Civilizations: Us and Them Beyond Orientalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
- 25.
Consequently, what we call the “theological takeover” is compatible with accounts of the secularization of Europe , if “ secularization” is defined as decline in the practice of and the participation in institutional religion.
- 26.
The classic British example is Laurie Green, Let’s Do Theology: A Pastoral Cycle Resource Book (London: Continuum, 2002).
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Schmiedel, U., Smith, G. (2018). Conclusion: The Theological Takeover. In: Schmiedel, U., Smith, G. (eds) Religion in the European Refugee Crisis. Religion and Global Migrations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67961-7_16
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