Unlike the US, with its "In God We Trust" engravings on coins and in courtrooms, its Washington prayer breakfasts and various other religious ceremonies in public life, most countries in Europe pretty much keep religious rituals outside the rituals of government.
This seems consistent with recent survey findings that show Europeans less religiously observant than Americans and uneasy about a US foreign policy that they see as driven by a sort of messianic zeal that is dangerous precisely because its inspiration is a matter of faith.
It may come as something of a surprise, then, that added to all the other divisions bedeviling what is called the European project are disputes over whether God and Christianity ought to be inserted into the draft of the European constitution, from which both are now excluded.
The difference of view has to do with the constitution that will eventually be adopted to govern the EU after it expands from its current 15 members to 25 members next spring. For more than a year, a 105-member committee, under the direction of the former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, worked on a draft to be adopted, or not adopted, by the member nations.
In truth, the lengthy draft, which was completed and presented to members early last month, is a verbose document devoted mostly to determining new bureaucratic arrangements, like the number of commissioners on the governing body and their nationalities.
The document's preamble, which is not a masterpiece of European literature, is intended to enumerate the values adhered to by all the component parts of the EU, and it is over those first few paragraphs of the constitution that the debate on God and religion has centered.
As it now reads, the key sentence of the preamble is the one that defines Europe as a "civilization" whose inhabitants "have gradually developed the values underlying humanism: equality of persons, freedom, respect for reason." The only mention of religion at all in the preamble comes in the next sentence, which mentions the "cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe," an inheritance that has led to "the central role of the human person and his or her inviolable and inalienable rights."
Even that ever-so-brief recognition of the religious heritage of Europe was a last minute addition inserted by the drafters after they decided to delete an earlier specific reference to Christianity. That was part of a larger compromise in which the drafters also dropped mentions of Greco-Roman civilization and the Enlightenment as aspects of the common European heritage, phrases that suggest the secular philosophical foundations of European civilization. But the attempt to leave out both the Enlightenment and Christianity left many members of the various national delegations unsatisfied.
"It wasn't a problem-solving approach," Leszek Jesien, a Polish expert on the EU said. "It was an approach that put a certain fog on the issues.
"Personally, I'm not convinced that the religious tradition need be put into the preamble, but I don't see, if a large number of people want it, why it shouldn't be there. It's a matter of finding a bridge between the two sides."
What are the two sides? In one camp are the mostly Catholic countries, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Poland, which, urged on by the Vatican, have been most active in demanding a more emphatic recognition of Europe's religious roots.
They are joined by other countries, including Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Malta and Lithuania, all due to enter the EU next May, which support a Christian or a Judeo-Christian reference in the preamble.
"Either Europe is Christian or it is not Europe," was the bold formulation in a headline in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, a few weeks ago.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese