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organize a study group made up of European bureaucrats on the question of the Convention. In
Strasbourg, Catholics and Protestants organize breakfast debates for European parliamentarians.
These debates are useful for informal networking with regard to future lobbying efforts.
What Forms of Enunciation? Religions between Prophetic Speech and Expertise
According to Mark Lenders, Protestant pastor and secretary of the oldest European Protestant
organization, the Ecumenical Commission for Church and Society (EECCS), contacts with
European bureaucrats present two challenges: in order to be understood or just simply listened to,
one must have recourse to expertise and the use of profane categories as they are expressed in
European policies; however, given their religious orientation, churches speak of transcendent,
heteronymous values. This explains their need to maintain a prophetic discourse based upon
transcendent principles ( justice,charity) in order to contest the market economy upon which the
European construction depends.
Also, churches are active in Brussels by means of a strategy which wavers between attestation and
protestation, the two preferred modes of publicaction as defined by Bruno Duriez (Duriez, 2000).
In fact, in Brussels, they rather stand on a third position: a critical one, different from sheer and
simple protestation. On the one hand, churches adopt a critical stance due to their profound
attachment to the European project’s founding principles: peace and reconciliation among peoples.
On the other hand, by offering concrete alternative proposals in order to counterbalance the
market-driven and technique-oriented European construction, churches display a critical vigilance
with regard to the latter concerning the tools favoured and the goals privileged.
Europeanization: An Example of Secularization within the Religious?
To a certain extent, European integration secularizes religious actors. First,the tendency towards
the professionalization and specialization of church bodies in Brussels means that their personnel
are made up almost exclusively of lay experts. Second, in a secularized society, religious discourse
suffers from a loss of plausibility. In order to be heard, religious groups secularize their discourse
(Fenn, 1982). Lobbying by religious organizations in Brussels is less about promoting the
religious and more about the trivialization and the secularization of the religious itself. This results
from the hegemony of the political-economic sphere and the dominance of a rationalist and
functionalist mindset (Gauchet, 1998). European institutions can be influenced and religious
groups act accordingly, like any other interest group. In their case it involves integrating religious
concerns and actions with worldly ones. For instance, prayers were said in the Von Maerlant
Chapel, a Catholic church close to the European Parliament, for a successful Convention on the
Future of Europe, the assembly in charge of elaborating the Constitutional Treaty. However,
churches speak of transcendental values which sometime enter into conflict with the secular,
mercantile, liberal and individualist European city; secularization is a process which is strictly
means-oriented. Calling upon both Europe’s patrimonial and anthropological resources, religions
seek their place in secularized society. The degree of secularization within religions varies.
Catholic and Orthodox churches, notably the Russian Orthodox Church, seek to form a common
front with regard to bioethical and moral questions by means of their own social doctrine as well
as a certain Christian vision of humankind. This is accompanied by a very critical discourse
concerning the EU as both archetype and promoter of western modernity; Greek, Russian and
Romanian Orthodox churches present in Brussels promote Orthodox civilization as an alternative
to permissive European civilization (Massignon, 2005). A group of experts made up of Muslim
intellectuals, including Tariq Ramadan, who is close to the Muslim Brotherhood, saw with the
entry of Orthodox countries into the EU the opportunity to weaken the idea of the western
separation of the religious and the political. However, Protestant churches are accepting of
secularization and sanctify pluralist values: according to them, the diversity within Protestantism
and intra-Protestant ecumenism can serve as an example for Europe. Keith Jenkins, Secretary
General of the EECCS, declared at the European Protestant Assembly in Budapest (24–30