Transforming Bodies and Religions: Introduction

Abstract

Over the past decade, a variety of political, social, and economic transformations have significantly influenced the perception of religion in Europe. A growing popularity of populist and nationalist political ideologies draw on a renewed interest in the relation between religion, nation states, and the strengthening of national identities. These modes of thinking emphasise the symbolic meaning of what they promulgate as ‘Judeo-Christian’ roots and values, which are – rather paradoxically – frequently understood as the grounds for progressive, and eventually irreligious, sexual ethics, and in other contexts as an incentive for the stressing of ‘traditional family values’. The (re)construction of a culturally and historically Christian Europe, moreover, is believed to be threatened by Islam as its religious, cultural, and racialised Other.