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A European Culture of Religious Tolerance
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1725-6739
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EUI LAW; 2008/04
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AUGENSTEIN, Daniel, A European Culture of Religious Tolerance, EUI LAW, 2008/04 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/7912
Abstract
In the European integration process, the European Union continues to struggle for an
identity that can generate widespread support amongst its peoples. In this context it has
been suggested by some that the European Union should embrace the Christian values
that underpin its national traditions and cultures. I shall argue that, instead of relying on
a communitarian vision of a ‘Christian Europe’, a European identity should build on a
culture of religious tolerance. A European culture of religious tolerance draws on the
enduring of difference and the acknowledgement of persisting and intractable conflict as
essential experiences of Europe’s Christian past. Thus understood, tolerance lies at the
roots of a European identity. At the same time, and through the conditional inclusion of
religious diversity in the European nation-states, a European culture of religious
tolerance creates over time new commonalities between Europe’s religiously permeated
national traditions. Thus understood, tolerance only brings about the conditions for the
development of a genuine European identity that amounts to more than (the sum of) its
national counterparts.