Religion and Nationalism in Contemporary Europe: Towards a Renewed Syncretism?

Résumé 0

In the past decades, we have witnessed the global re-emergence of the political meaning of both nationalism and religion. This paper explores contemporary fragments of this trend across three European countries: Britain, France and Poland. The discursive occurrences brought into the analysis are taken from the state-centred political arenas as well as more diffused or marginal sociological elements. While the approach is primarily set in the perspective of nationalism studies, the final aim of the paper is to nourish the reflection on the negotiations of political and social significations which transpire through the occurrences presented in the analysis. To what extent are religious discourses inherent to the resurgence of nationalist discourses and social practices? Reversely, are nationalistic phenomena inherently religious in nature, hence favourable to combinations between religious and nationalist discursive elements? Are the contemporary forms presented in this paper, tokens of a new (or renewed) syncretism of a would-be dominant reactionary grid of social significations?