The Church and the State in Europe: East versus West?

The article attempts to identify and assess both the types of differentiation in patterns of church-state relationships across European space and the trends of change which have occurred across time. The central hypothesis to be tested is the claim advanced by some authors that contemporary trends can, when taken together, be seen to prefigure the emergence, in spite of continuing surface differences, of a distinctive European common model – one which is furthermore as different from that associated with the USA in the far West as it is from that of China in the far East. By contrast with those counterposed “Others” the emergent European model might, it is argued, be seen as an object of hope for the overcoming within Europe of the many tensions which have surfaced in connection with the recent steep resurgence of the religious factor in politics across the world