The Hindu : Europe debates its faith

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Thursday, Nov 13, 2003

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Europe debates its faith

By Richard Bernstein

Disputes have arisen over whether references to God and Christianity ought to be inserted into the draft of the European constitution.

UNLIKE THE United States, with its "In God We Trust" engravings on coins and in courtrooms, its Washington prayer breakfasts and various other religious ceremonies in public life, most countries of Europe pretty much keep religious rituals outside of the rituals of government. This seems consistent with recent survey findings that show Europeans less religiously observant than Americans and uneasy about a U.S. foreign policy that they see as driven by a sort of messianic zeal that is dangerous precisely because its inspiration is a matter of faith.

It may come as something of a surprise, then, that added to all the other divisions bedevilling what is called the European project are disputes over whether God and Christianity ought to be inserted into the draft of the European constitution, from which both are now excluded.

The difference of view has to do with the constitution that will eventually be adopted to govern the European Union after it expands from its current 15 members to 25 members next spring. For more than a year, a 105-member committee, under the direction of the former French President, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, worked on a draft to be adopted, or not adopted, by the member-nations.

In truth, the lengthy draft, which was completed and presented to members early in October, is a verbose document devoted mostly to determining new bureaucratic arrangements like the number of commissioners on the governing body and their nationalities. The document's preamble, which is not a masterpiece of European literature, is intended to enumerate the values adhered to by all the component parts of the European Union, and it is over those first few paragraphs of the constitution that the debate on God and religion has centred.

As it now reads, the key sentence of the preamble is the one that defines Europe as a "civilisation" whose inhabitants "have gradually developed the values underlying humanism: equality of persons, freedom, respect for reason." The only mention of religion at all in the preamble comes in the next sentence, which mentions the "cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe," an inheritance that has led to "the central role of the human person and his or her inviolable and inalienable rights."

Even that ever so brief recognition of the religious heritage of Europe was a last minute addition inserted by the drafters after they decided to delete an earlier specific reference to Christianity. That was part of a larger compromise in which the drafters also dropped mentions of Greco-Roman civilisation and the Enlightenment as aspects of the common European heritage, phrases that suggest the secular philosophical foundations of European civilisation. But the attempt to leave out both the Enlightenment and Christianity left many members of the various national delegations unsatisfied.

What are the two sides? In one camp are the mostly Catholic countries, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Poland, which, urged on by the Vatican, have been most active in demanding a more emphatic recognition of Europe's religious roots. They are joined by other countries, including Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Malta and Lithuania, all due to enter the European Union next May, which support a Christian or a Judeo-Christian reference in the preamble.

"Either Europe is Christian or it is not Europe," was the bold formulation in a headline in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, a few weeks ago.

On the other side is a conviction, held most tenaciously by France and Belgium, which have perhaps the fiercest attachments to the idea of total church-state separation. It is quite simply that religion does not belong in the fundamental governing document of an association of European countries.

This seems to be what President Jacques Chirac had in mind when, speaking at a European summit meeting last month, he said: ``In France, all are free to believe and practice their religion. Or they can choose not to believe. There should be no favouritism in religion."

Ultimately, the question is how best to give expression to European diversity even while giving a common identity to 25 countries with different traditions and histories. Clearly, the concept "humanism" was central to that identity in the minds of the constitution's drafters, though in the end, to accommodate demands for an acknowledgment of the religious heritage, they did put in that single phrase about "the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe."

"For us that was already a compromise," said Stefaan de Rynck, spokesman for the Commission on Institutional Reform of the European Union. "We wanted a general reference so as not to exclude any particular religious heritage."

But there seems plenty of support in Europe for a specific mention of Christianity, or the Judeo-Christian tradition, or even the Judeo-Christian-Islamic heritages of Europe. Certainly at least some on the pro-religion side of the issue have voiced support for including all three of the major religions as a gesture of inclusiveness. — New York Times News Service

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