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a pluralist and neutral framework. First, the European Commission is neutral with regard to
religions. It does not choose qualified religions, nor does it set ‘‘religiously correct’’ guidelines
upon this informal dialogue. The Commission Presidency refuses to select one sole interlocutor for
each religion, thereby recognizing the plurality which exists within each denomination. Some
ultra-minority groups are included in briefings. These now welcome some 60 members. Second,
European institutions call upon religious leaders, but the reference to Europe’s Christian heritage
is problematic, as demonstrated by the conflict over the preamble to the Charter of Fundamental
Rights and the debate on the Constitutional Treaty. Concerning the latter, the religious and
philosophical heritages are referred to in the plural, but not nominally so; the EU’s values are
expressed in a secular and universal language which brings together democracy, the rule of law
and human rights. Now, human rights are the supreme example of a sacred profane. According to
Durkheim, when a society becomes too diverse and complex, it is no longer shared ideals which
unite humans but their ‘‘shared attachment to humanity’’ (Durkheim,[1911] 1993: 45). The Rights
of Man are, in this light, a remnant of sacredness in Europe.
Interpretive Essay: Transactions between Immanence and Transcendence
These tensions between immanence and transcendence speak of an overcoming of secularization’s
first stage, marked by the privatization of the religious and the political transfer of the sacred.
Relations between religions and the EU take place in secularization’s second stage, where the
desacralization of politics is compatible with public expressions of the religious within a
democratic, pluralist and neutral framework; transactions between the religious and the political
multiply around a now porous dividing line separating the public from the private. According to
Gauchet, ‘‘the bureaucratic-democratic State progresses to the degree that it abandons all attempts
to give a definitive form to the future and the acceptation of its openness to its citizens’ everchanging
multiple aspirations and initiatives’’ (Gauchet, 1985: 260). The state becomes
commonplace and ceases to be an alternative to religion. It has recourse to religion as a well of
secular meaning within a pluralist context where the democratic state is more permeable with
regard to civil society’s multiple admonitions. A diversity of religions and secular humanism are
welcomed. This ‘‘dignified enrolment’’ of religions in no way signifies a renewed religious hold
upon the public sphere, because religious groups are in competition (Gauchet, 1998). Also, for
Jean-Paul Willaime (1990), the secularization of politics, in its refusal to make of politics an end
in itself, reintroduces religions into the public sphere in the form of a civic ethical religion which
acts as a vector in the renewal of social ties in crisis. There is no reconstitution of the power of
religions in the public sphere to the degree that religions are welcomed according to their capacity
to adopt the language of Human Rights as the foundation of democratic society (Willaime, 1990).
It would be too simple to trace a total separation of the functions provided by religions and
political and administrative authority, strictly assigning ethical preoccupations to the former and
day-to-day management to the latter. The political as well as the religious are preoccupied with
social bonds and the general interest. Christian churches and secular movements, with differing
philosophical backgrounds, have placed the accent upon the collective dimension of the social
which is absent from the Charter of Fundamental Rights.If European institutions seek to find
meaning in a complex, integrated society it is not by mobilizing the religiosity of the religious but
rather by means of a general capacity to speak globally, in terms of trans-sectorality and global–
local articulation. Religions are expert generalists. They introduce transversal preoccupations in
the face of European policies which are exceedingly segmented and sectoral. Where the Common
Agricultural Policy treats agriculture as a production sector, Protestant experts insist on‘‘rurality’’,
tying together economic, social, environmental and international (equity in North–South
relationships) questions. What is more, religious actors have the capacity to be transnational
actors, articulating the links between the local, national, international and European levels for
European institutions often lacking field experience.