Sven-Eric Liedman on Religion, Europe, and European Intellectuals:
The image of the world heading into an ever deepening religious enchantment exhibits one big and important exception: Europe. In most European countries, particularly those within the EU-region, de-Christianization seems to progress unchanged. Pentecostalism's advances are merely marginal in most areas and while Islam is indeed advancing, it is mainly due to immigration from countries where Islam is a dominant religion. The spread of both certainly display the same patterns as on other continents; however, in a global perspective, the most noteworthy is nevertheless the confinement of these progressions. The major international surveys on people's religious attitudes and practices, in Europe the European Values Survey and globally the World Values Survey, give an unequivocal picture: Europe is far more de-Christianized than other parts of the world, where Christianity has gained wide distribution, and other religions do not fill the gap that de-Christianization has left behind.
At the same time, Europe has over the past ten or fifteen years experienced an odd, renewed interest in traditional theological questions amongst many prominent intellectuals otherwise associated to irreligious, or at the least non-religious currents. It is not the aforementioned Onfray and Dawkins who with their atheist tracts appear typical. It is rather Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou, Jürgen Habermas, Slavoj Zizek, Giorgio Agamben and numerous others who have written important works on religion in general, and Christianity in particular. Several of the aforementioned have openly declared that they are atheists, or at least agnostics; Habermas has by Max Weber's example stated that he is "unmusical" when it comes to religion. But they all display a noticeably positive interest in the many religious expressions of our age and of the past. Their intention is not to fight religious faith, but rather understand it and its inherent power. To a great extent, their attention is caught by the political potential in religious faith.
In Europe, there is a aura of mystery around religion and the people for whom it is the most important thing show some modesty because they are too conscious of the fact that religion is a private affair. Religion can be more freely the subject of intellectual discussions because Europeans, more often than not, aren’t exhibitionists with their religious faith, they consider that it is a part of their private lives, which, they don’t have to share and that they don't have to contaminate the rest of society with their religious fervor for it to become valuable. Thus, the religious isn’t above intellectualism because its mysterious and personal nature, the fact that it is hidden or rather confined to the private sphere has made it less sacred, more human, and more importantly omnipresent. This fact doesn’t mean that Europe is irreligious for aft it is impossible not to recognize its Judeo-Christian heritage and not to see the influence that the Church still has in many European societies. What is peculiar and, I believe, great about Europe is that religion isn’t considered great in itself; the religious isn’t superior to reason and has to accept that it can only be unquestioned and sacred in the private sphere when it doesn’t violate laws.
