Introduction by Matthias Smalbrugge

The French elections had a clear winner, Emmanuel Macron. Yet his adversary had had 40% of the votes. Of course, when the choice is only between two candidates the outcome of 60/40 seems quite normal, it may even be interpreted as a healthy equilibrium between two parts of the electorate. Unfortunately, this is not the case. France is a strongly divided country and polarization characterized these last elections. However, France is not the only case of such a polarized society. Everywhere in Europe as well as elsewhere deep cleavages cut through the cultural, political, and sociological landscape. Cleavages that do not have a single cause, but that nevertheless seem rooted in social and economic troubles. Many people in Western society did not benefit from the globalizing structures that invaded our societies in the last decades. Neoliberalism created free markets but, paradoxically, often didn’t create freedom but obliged people to obey dynamics they couldn’t influence, let alone reject. Many therefore felt abandoned and political differences became unbridgeable. In addition to this, the crises our society had to face — think of the financial crisis of 2008 — increased this feeling of abandonment, of politics that did not care about the large parts of the population of our society. This gave rise to fierce nationalism that took many forms.

In addition, political oppositions were not only due to the social and economic transformation of our society, there was also a political difference between autocratic and liberal societies. This latter difference became clearly visible in the war that started almost three months ago. The conclusion can only be that polarization is overwhelmingly present in our society, moreover, its powerful dynamics are still increasing, up to a point that The Guardian even organizes regularly ‘across the divide dinners’ between political and social opponents. In addition to this already widening gap in our society, we had to deal with the pandemic of Covid-19. It took almost two years before we could return to a normal situation which in fact was no longer a normal situation. Again, polarization had increased and debates on vaccination, isolation, and mistrust were not only debates, they were clashes allowing different parties to take an even sharper stance.

Nevertheless, recently polarization has gained a new dimension. In these times of war it has become clearly visible that religion is an integral part of this modern polarization. It already was, at least conceptually, from the day of Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations, but recently it has become even clearer. The Russian Orthodox Church is entirely involved in the Russian imperialistic politics, but let us remind that the right-wing use of the opposition ‘Jewish-Christian culture’ against Muslim culture is no less proof of the role of religion in the polarization process. Finally, the struggle around Covid ended up in a new dimension of polarization.

The aim therefore of this round table is to discover some elements of this role of religion, to analyze the relationship between religion and secular power, and to look for a healthy relationship with secularity. 

Matthias Smalbrugge