State-Religion Relations in Southern and South-eastern Europe: Between Secularism and Majoritarian Nationalism

This paper studies comparatively (and to some extent provocatively as these countries are usually not grouped together), three southern European countries, notably Italy, Spain and Greece, with three southeastern European countries notably Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. Greece is actually a pivotal case as it belongs to both regions both geographically, historically and culturally. It shares with the other three Balkan countries their ‘Balkan predicament’ but not the Communist experience. It shares with Italy and Spain the early European integration experience and sense of belonging to the ‘West’ but not their relationship with the Catholic church and faith. This paper however delves beyond historical path dependencies to see how past experiences and characteristics have evolved during the past 20 years looking at most recent developments in terms of state-religion relations. Starting with a thick description of the historical legacies and post-1989 developments, we focus further on most recent issues of the last decade notably, the rise of populism and nationalism, and recent challenges such as the path to EU accession for BiH and Albania, the economic and Eurozone crisis of the 2010s, the refugee emergency of 2015 and still ongoing. Our main aim is to assess how these have shaped state-religion relations and to categorise the six countries in terms of the six-model typology proposed by Modood and Sealy. Our findings suggest that moderate secularism prevails in all six countries in the sense of allowing for mutual autonomy between state and religious institutions but restricting neutrality, and seeing religion as a public good that needs to be supported and regulated. There are however important variations in terms of the relevance of majoritarian nationalism in some of them as the state defines the prevailing religion and has strong historical and institutional ties with that religion as in the case of all three southern European countries – Italy, Spain and Greece, and to some extent in Bulgaria. Among these four, majoritarian nationalism is strongest in Greece and more moderate in the other three. By contrast in Albania and BiH we find at least in paper a variant of the ‘freedom of religion’ model as defined by Modood and Sealy notably institutionally creating more space for all religions and at the same time giving increased space for moral individualism and freedom of conscience. In BiH the situation is complicated as majoritarian nationalism is present for all three constituting communities rather than for a single majority. The paper elaborates on these specificities and concludes with some further questions on the importance of the notion of operative vs qualifying norms as proposed by Modood and Sealy and on the role of current events and challenges in shaping further state-religion relations in the present and near future.