Religion and Dissensus over Liberal Democracy

Liberal democracy in Europe has long been underpinned by a tacit consensus on a shared historical experience around the traumas of the two world wars, and shared cultural roots to be found in the productive tension between Enlightenment and Christianity. The post-war European integration project itself was shaped by Christian Democratic leaders who championed human dignity, solidarity, and peace as moral foundations of a new, democratic political order. In this sense, religion served as a reservoir of ethical legitimacy and a source of societal cohesion that helped stabilise the liberal-democratic consensus. Today, however, this relationship between religion and European liberal democracy is increasingly marked by contestation.