Sacred interweavings

The role of religion in the creation of new ethnicities in Western Europe and the importance of religious pilgrimage were the pillars of the address delivered by John Eade, from the Roehampton and Surrey Universities, on the occasion of the conference, "Popular religion in post-secular society", held in Padua (Italy) October 19-20. In particular, the scholar has analyzed how new ethnicities raise important challenges to the traditional vision of national identity, challenges in which religious and political processes are intertwined at inner level and through national borders.Multiculturalism. "Although Angela Merkel and David Cameron reject the concept of multiculturalism – the expert said – since the Second World War the nations of Western Europe have become increasingly diversified". Since the 1950s the growing cultural diversity of Western Europe, produced by migration flows at global level, questioned the dominating idea whereby "Europe was subjected to an inevitable and unilateral modernization process entailing progressive laicity". Notably, growing controversies on religion, referred to the installment of extra-European Muslim populations, contradicted the assumption that in the modern world religion would be inexorably confined to a private practice. In fact, the scholar explained, cultural diversity has become a key concept in the study of transnational migration flows. Conversely, surveys on religious pilgrimages remained the subject matter of those who, from Western Europe, returned to the holy places of their countries of origin, or the most important ones like Mecca, Jerusalem and Rome. Doing so, the speaker underlined, "we ignore the construction of places of worship for minority groups in Western Europe, representing a remarkably important process since it shows how minorities are creating holy places within what initially was a foreign land".New pilgrimages. These pilgrimage activities, don’t only regard the members of minority groups as they also involve external members, such as other religious and lay institutions. Western Europe, Eade pointed out, already has a wide range of religious centres for Hindu and Sikh migrants. A website informs us on the presence of 59 Hindu and gurudwara Sikh temples in Belgium, France, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland and The Netherlands, against 22 in Great Britain only. "Since a large number of hindu temples attract the pilgrims, there is the evident possibility that some of these could become pilgrimage centres, as they already organize their festivities with great celebrations". This shows that there is an ongoing "sacralization process whereby a foreign country becomes sacred thanks to its colonizers", although this process is often accompanied by a certain degree of opposition. Religious, ideological and political processes. The scholar analyzed the ways in which Catholic places of worship in other West-European countries have been influenced by post-colonial immigration and by trans-national ties, showing, for example, that "French African pilgrims transform Lourdes into their holy home and non-Christians try to take over Catholic places of worship for their personal goals and the "journey" is reinterpreted by various religious and non-religious players". In particular, in the nations of Eastern, South Eastern and Central Europe, the long story of pilgrimage has been dominated by the interaction between political institutions and diversities as well as by the prevalence of Catholics, Muslims, and Orthodox. To this regard the speaker brought the case of Czestochowa, a place of worship in Poland, which, like others, represents a point of ideological and political resistance to foreign rule. Recently, acknowledged John Eade, "the pilgrims visiting these places appear to be influenced by the fact that Poland has been annexed to the European project".The rethinking of Europe. Concluding his speech John Eade pointed out that in the framework of the debate on multiculturalism "at least in Western Europe global migration has raised doubts on the collective stories that European nation-states have created in the course of the past century". This entails a general reconsideration, as has happened, for example, in the case of Catholic shrines, involving cultural diversity, welcoming post-colonial Catholic immigrants and reinterpreting their religious accounts, to adapt them to growing religious diversity and global emigration. Inevitably, this transformation will also involve the concept of "journey", which is increasingly becoming a "a space that literally and symbolically is open to new understandings of the European transnational scene in which various religious interests cannot be properly situated".