USKONTO JA SEKULARISMI EUROOPAN UNIONIN KULTTUURIPERINTÖKERTOMUKSISSA. (Finnish)

Various classical texts describe European cultural heritage as stemming from Hellenistic aesthetics, Roman law and governance, and Christian religion and ethics. This basis is recognized in the European Union’s political discourses on European cultural heritage. Christianity can be perceived as a complex component of this basis and therefore a difficult topic for the Union. The EU needs to balance the support for Christian conviction with its strong role in the political cultures in several European countries; increasing secularity of European societies; secularism as political thought; cultural and religious diversification of Europe; and liberal values emphasized as the foundation of the Union. This balancing is discussed first in terms of recent theoretical literature on religion and secularism in Europe and the EU. This discussion contextualizes a case study of a recent flagship EU heritage action, the European Heritage Label. This case study explores the role of religion in this action and how the difficulty related to it is reflected in practice, drawing on content analysis of the evaluation and selection reports of sites awarded the European Heritage Label. The article shows that this difficulty is solved in the EU’s heritage discourses by approaching religion as cultural memory, heritage, and tradition belonging to the narrative of Europe’s past rather than dealing with it as a religious practice in the European present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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