The challenge of religion to secular Europe and the role of interreligious dialogue

Abstract

Today's Western societies and European societies in particular, are characterized both by mass-immigration, which undoubtedly leaves its mark on the native culture, and by an increasing alienation which has revealed the profound emptiness lying at its heart after decades of secularism. It is true that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 did not only lead to the re-unification of the two Germanys, but also the re-discovery of Eastern Europe together with the spiritual ideals that it has preserved in spite of decades of oppression.1 But the fall of the last bastion of the absolute secular state embodied in communism, has not only led to a political and social vacuum, but also to a psychological and a spiritual challenge. After decades of fostering a mentality of survival, societies that formed part of what used to be called the Eastern bloc have experienced freedom as if they had been exposed to a cultural explosion. They have found themselves totally unprotected from the development that had taken place in Western Europe during the preceding decades. They have found themselves encountering a culture driven by unbridled and merciless market forces and especially by consumerism which are leading to another more subtle and, consequently, more dangerous form of totalitarianism. In many ways even modern western culture has become a culture of survival.