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diversity of European states in terms of both levels of religious practice and systems of worship
management.
In many ways, an analysis of the European construction is heuristically useful when trying to
come to terms with the evolutions at work in the states of the European Union (EU). First,
Brussels is a microcosm wherein Europe’s national, ethnic and religious diversity meets and
confronts itself. It is here that a common political culture of deliberation and compromiseis forged
(Abe´ le` s and Bellier, 1996). Second, the EU does not have recourse to tradition when it comes
to managing relations between religion and politics; new points of contact with religions are in the
process of being invented.The European model for politically managing the religious is an original
synthesis of its member states’ differing traditions with regard to church–state relations,
combining as it does elements of the French separatist system and the cooperative German model,
all within a post-national optic (Massignon, 2005a: 542–576).
Does the ‘‘European laboratory’ announce the emergence of a new rapport between the religious
and the political in advanced Modernity? What should we make of the relationship between
politics and religions as ‘‘bearers of meaning’’ in a context of political crisis and the loss of
meaning? In what follows we will, first, analyse the actions of religious groups in their dealings
with European institutions, and second, analyse the latter’s expectations with regard to these
religious groups.
I. Religions on the European Scene: Between Immanence and Transcendence
In their modes of presence as well as in their public discourses, churches on the European scene
navigate between immanence and transcendence. In many ways, European religious organizations
act as lobbies and religious activities, strictly speaking, seem secondary and subsumed as they are
within larger lobbying strategies. Yet, through their ethical concerns and their defence of their
anthropological values, churches speak of another world, one which is at odds with the liberal and
mercantile European construction.
What Modes of Presence? Religions as Actors in European Civil Society,between Pastoral and
Lobbying
By means of their varying degrees of investment in member countries’ educational, health-related
and charitable sectors, religions in Europe, particularly Christian ones, are key actors in the public
space. A typical example is that ofthe German churches which co-manage vast portions of public
services,thereby making them the state’s second largest employer. European Catholic and
Protestant organizations participate in four different ways in the creationof a European public
space: via the dissemination of news and information; training; networking; and pastoral work.
These four activities are at once openings to and contacts with civil society.
First, the European religious press has as its principal concern the ongoing European construction.
What is striking is the neutral, non-religious character of publications such as the Catholic
monthly Europe Infos. Second, training sessions organized by European churches are not limited
to the religiously informed public. These training sessions seek to sensitize youth to current
European questions. Thanks to its office in Poland, the Catholic Office of Information and
Initiative for Europe (OCIPE), the European Jesuit Agency nurtures Europhile feeling by means of
group encounters with influential politicians and journalists. Third, religious organizations lobby
in Brussels, thereby inserting themselves into ever larger networks.Close work with nonconfessional
religious groups can go so far as to secularize certain objectives. The European
Jewish Information Centre (CEJI),which from its inception saw itself as the head of a network of
Jewish organizationsin Brussels, has little by little become involved with mostly nonreligious
organizations in European programmes concerned with the fight against racism and anti-Semitism.
Its more communitarian functions are now assumed by the European Jewish Congress while
religious representation has passed to the Conference of European Rabbis and a Lubavitcher
Office the Rabbinical Center of Europe. Finally, pastoral activities are tied to other activities. The
Foyer Catholique Europe´ en (FCE) welcomes European bureaucrats and their families and also