9 The Religious Situation in Europe José Casanova This essay is divided into three parts. First, I ofer a very general and therefore somewhat superfcial overview of the contemporary religious situation in Europe. In the second part, I ofer a series of arguments why the paradigm of secular- ization is not very helpful in trying to explain the complex religious situation in Europe today, and why we need to look at the secularization of Western European societies with new eyes and with new perspectives, which can only come from a more comparative historical and global perspective. Finally, I ofer some suggestions as to why the expectation that religion would become increasingly privatized and therefore socially irrelevant has not proven right and why, on the contrary, we are now witnessing the fact that religion is once again becoming an important public issue in Europe. Overview of the religious situation in Europe First of all, it is important to emphasize that there is not one single and uniform religious situation in Europe. There are multiple, very diverse and ambiguous religious situations and trends throughout Europe which one should avoid characterizing in simple terms. I can only indicate here some of the most obvious diferences. Former East Germany is by far and by any measure the least religious country of all of Europe, followed at a long distance by the Czech Republic and the Scandinavian countries. At the other extreme, Ireland and Poland are by far the most religious countries of Europe with rates comparable to those of the United States. In general, with the signifcant exceptions of France and the Czech Republic, Catholic countries tend to be more religious than Protestant or mixed countries (former West Germany, Netherlands), although Switzerland (a mixed and traditionally polarized country comparable to Holland) stands at the high end of the European religious scale, with rates of belief similar to those of Catholic Austria and Spain and with rates of participation and confessional a fliation similar to Poland and Ireland. In general, former communist countries in East Joas, Secluarization and the Wor206 206 24/03/2009 13:14:38