In the last decades, most European countries have been debating religion-related issues. The present contribution analyses the Italian case, by focusing on the main controversial issues involving religion in the last decade: bioethics and reproductive issues, and Islam-related ‘civilizational’ issues. Through the comparative analyses of these debates (actors and frames), between the 2001 and the 2013 Italian parliamentary elections, the paper aims to shed light on the specific configuration of contemporary Italian political secularism.
We will present the different forms of politicization of religion and religious issues, and the configuration of political coalitions around the topics – which proved to be highly volatile and linked to specific windows of opportunity in the Italian political debate.
