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KEYNOTE LECTURES 2025

 

RELIGION AND SOCIO-CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION:

EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES AND BEYOND

 

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​Constant change is a permanent feature of contemporary European societies – not least in relation to their religious landscapes. This transformation is driven by various religious and socio-cultural factors, some of which are intertwined, in conflict or mutually dependent upon each other: ongoing individualization, issues of gender identity and sexual orientation, digitalization and artificial intelligence and the ecological crises.
 

In this context, religion is caught in the tension between several – sometimes opposing – forces, and progressive secularization meets the increasing public visibility of religion due to migration and religious pluralization. How can religions, with their moral, cultural, and symbolic reservoirs, contribute to holding diverse communities together, beyond national identity? Can religions, especially when they are part of secular states, promote the social cohesion of European societies? Can the imagination that drives different religious traditions provide religious and non-religious Europeans with resources to promote individual and collective change for the better? And what specific potential for a new togetherness and peaceful coexistence of people can be raised in the unique context of Europe – a context which is currently characterized by a particular encounter between the secular world and different religious traditions, but which is also shaped by a very specific history and deeply religious roots?
 

 

The keynote lectures at EuARe 2025 will focus on topics such as:

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  • The role of religion in global change affecting Europe: e.g. individualization, sexual orientation/gender choice, digitalization and artificial intelligence, migration and the ecological crises

  • Europe as a place of peaceful coexistence between the secular world and the great religious traditions

  • Religion as a possible form of social cohesion beyond national identities and social discrepancies

  • Religion as a potential threat to social cohesion and democracies in Europe

  • Secularization and religion in the context of migration-related pluralism

  • The role of religious imagination for personal and collective transformation​

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GRACE DAVIE

Emeritus Professor at the University of Exeter (England)

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Grace Davie is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter in the UK, a member of the Academia Europaea, and a lay canon of the Diocese of Europe. She began her sociological career with an undergraduate degree in Sociology at the University of Exeter (1967), followed by a doctorate at the London School of Economics (1975).
During her tenure at the University of Exeter, Professor Davie established strong connections with a wide variety of European and other academic institutions, notably the École Pratique des Hautes Études, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Uppsala University.
Davie's research focuses on the sociology of religion, particularly the changing patterns of religion in Europe and the theoretical paradigms that have emerged in this field. On a more practical level, Davie has explored the interactions between religion and welfare and religion and health care, recognising the implications of these diverse areas for sociological thinking about religion. 
Recent publications include Religion in Britain: A Persistent Paradox (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015) and, co-edited with Lucian Leustean, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). For more information, please visit experts.exeter.ac.uk/grace-davie.

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Religion in modern Europe: Unexpected challenges

The starting point of this lecture is found in the work of Tomáš Halik, and in particular his most recent book The Afternoon of Christianity: The Courage to Change. Fr. Halik – a Czech Catholic priest trained in both theology and sociology – emphasizes the importance of context in understanding the place of religion in modern societies. Context is considered in terms of time as well as space and is constantly changing.
The second section draws briefly on an article by Grace Davie that was published in 2006 which focused on factors to be considered in order to understand the religious situation in Europe at the turn of the millennium.
The third section indicates the changes that have taken place since then and the reasons for these. Some changes were expected; others less so, notably the growth of populism right across Europe and the place of religion in this. The mood is darker. The key to understanding these shifts is to hold together two much-studied phenomena: continuing – indeed remorseless – secularization and growing religious diversity. The implications are
considerable.

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ISABELLA GUANZINI

Professor at the Catholic Private University of Linz (Austria)

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Isabella Guanzini is Professor of Fundamental Theology at the Catholic Private University of Linz; in the winter semester of 2024-2025, she held the Guardini Professorship in Religious Philosophy and the Catholic Worldview at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She has a doctorate in Theology from the University of Vienna (2012), a doctorate in Humanistic Studies from the Catholic University Milan (2013) and a habilitation from the Goethe University Frankfurt (2021). From 2016 to 2019, she was Professor of Fundamental Theology at the University of Graz. Her research focuses on the problem of translating biblical-theological categories into the contemporary plural context, on the relationship between theology and aesthetics and between Christianity and psychoanalysis. Her latest publications include Kunst trifft Theologie. Begegnungen in der Fremde (2024, with H.-W. Rückenbauer and I. Bruckner); Beyond the Sacrificial Fantasy: Body, Law, and Desire, in: Open Theology 2024/10; Wounded Beauty: Aesthetic- Theological Motifs in the Work of Alberto Burri and Anselm Kiefer, in: Religions (2023).

Faith and Desire. On believing in secular Europe

Within the European public space that continues to secularize, the conditions of faith are undergoing profound processes of metamorphosis and reconfiguration. On the one hand, the new situation of diaspora, marginalization and exculturation of Christian tradition tends to dialectically generate ideological closures, culture wars and cognitive defenses.
On the other hand, these processes of transformation impose a critical reflection on what remains of the “need to believe” in post-traditional contexts, that is, on that individualized, indeterminate, fluctuating, but not entirely evaporated post-secular faith that seems to resist both technocratic nihilism and religious fundamentalism in their various expressions. The philosophical question concerns the possibility and responsibility of religious experiences in the European democratic space that are not only self-critical and reflective but also deeply affective. Starting from the assumption that every believing subject is also a desiring subject, through a dialogue between biblical exegesis, continental philosophy and contemporary psychoanalysis, an attempt will be made to propose an analysis of the conditions of believing in present-day secular Europe.

TARIQ MADOOD

Professor at the University of Bristol (England)

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Tariq Modood is Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy, the founding (former) Director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol, and the co-founder of the international journal Ethnicities. He has held over 40 grants and consultancies, has over 35 (co-)authored and (co-)edited books and reports and over 350 articles and chapters. He was awarded an MBE by the Queen for services to social sciences and ethnic relations in 2001, was made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK) in 2004 and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2017. In 2022, he was ranked in the top 20 UK-cited Politics, Law, Sociology and Social Policy scholars. He served on the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life and has been an advisor to the All- Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims, the European Commission on Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) and to the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). His latest books are Essays on Secularism and Multiculturalism (2019) and with T. Sealy, The New Governance of Religious Diversity (2024). He has a You Tube Channel, and his website is tariqmodood.com

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A Framework for Comparing and Evaluating Political Secularisms

This talk is based on Tariq Modood and Thomas Sealy's The New Governance of Religious Diversity (2024). The book is guided by two questions: an empirical one about how states govern religious diversity and a normative one about how religious diversity should be governed. Our approach is based on a position that views the relationship between the empirical and normative as one of close entwinement.
Eschewing Euro-American-centric perspectives that define secularism in terms of religious freedom or treat a particular country as a paradigm (typically the USA or France), we argue there are multiple secularisms present across different global contexts. Yet, this is not mere descriptivism or relativism. Our analytical framework is designed not merely to capture specific countries or change over time or enable comparative empirical understanding, but it is also the basis for a normative engagement with modes of secularism, a multicultural secularism based on the Bristol School of Multiculturalism.

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HANS SCHELKSHORN

Professor at the University of Vienna (Austria)

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Hans Schelkshorn is chair of the Department of Intercultural Philosophy of Religion at the University of Vienna. He studied philosophy, catholic theology and classical philology in Vienna and Tübingen (Germany). After a doctorate in catholic theology in 1989 and a doctorate in philosophy in 2004, he completed his habilitation in philosophy at the University of Vienna in 2007. His main research fields are philosophy of religion, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and theories of modernity in an intercultural perspective, Latin American philosophy. He is co-founder of the journal “Polylog – Zeitschrift für interkulturelles Philosophieren” (www.polylog.net) and president of the Viennese Society of Intercultural Philosophy (WIGIP). He is one of the specialists in Latin American philosophy in the German-speaking world, and he participated in the dialogue between Latin American Philosophy of Liberation and European Discourse Ethics in the 1990s. His last monography is a revised version of his habilitation: Rethinking European Modernity. Reason, Power, and Coloniality in Early Modern Thought (London: Bloomsbury 2024).

Transformations of Religion and Politics in a Multipolar World. New Challenges for
an Intercultural Philosophy of Religion

Since the 19th century, philosophical reinterpretations of religious traditions have emerged in various regions of the world, particularly in India, Japan, the Islamic world, Africa and Latin America. In this context, European philosophies, including the ideas of human rights and democracy, have been received and creatively combined with their own traditions of religious thought. In the interreligious dialogues, the demand for a multipolar world society was repeatedly raised, in which the hegemony of Europe and the West was to be overcome. However, with the rise of China, India and other regional powers, a multipolar world has now become a reality in which hopes for peaceful coexistence between religions have remained largely unfulfilled. On the contrary, human rights and democracy are currently being radically called into question in the name of religion in all regions of the world, including in Europe itself, by authoritarian and imperial identity politics. Against this background, an intercultural philosophy of religion today faces the challenge of reflecting anew on the relationship between religion and politics on a global scale.

RIK TORFS

Emeritus Professor at KU Leuven (Belgium)

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Rik Torfs began his academic career at the Faculty of Canon Law of KU Leuven in 1988 and was appointed full professor of Canon Law in 1996. Torfs studied canon law at KU Leuven & University of Strasbourg and obtained his doctorate in canon law at KU Leuven in 1987.
He is currently a visiting professor at the Universities of Strasbourg, Stellenbosch, Nijmegen and Paris. In addition to more than 400 academic publications in the field of canon law, law and religion, Rik Torfs is the author of more than 15 books on society and religion targeted at a wide audience.
Between 2010 and 2013, Rik Torfs was a senator in the Belgian Federal Parliament. In 2013, he was elected rector (vice-chancellor) of his alma mater, KU Leuven. Rik Torfs is a well-known public figure in Belgium, known for his regular columns in influential Belgian newspapers and frequent appearances on Belgian radio and television programmes discussing politics, social issues and religion. In 2024, he played a leading role in the production of a six-part documentary on the Vatican, which was broadcast on Belgian and Dutch television.

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Religion in a Secularized Society: Legal Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Secularized societies exhibit several key characteristics, including the erosion of religion as the foundation of legal and societal systems, a blurred boundary between law and ethics, the increasing prominence of victimhood, the myth of absolute self-determination, and the paradox of relativism's absoluteness. These shifts can have profound legal consequences, reshaping the role of religion in public life. Freedom of expression may face new limitations to safeguard emotional sensitivities, while the autonomy of internal religious organizations might be deprioritized within an emerging hierarchy of human rights. The tension between privacy and religious freedom could intensify, and the scope of fundamental rights may shrink under the influence of prevailing societal worldviews.
This raises important questions: Does this signify progress or regression for religious freedom? What potential remedies might address these challenges?

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