Cultural and religious identities as concepts in the IR discipline. The case of European identity in interactions of the EU and the Roman Catholic Church

The text deals with the relation between religion and politics, in particular, with the conceptualization of religious identity in the discipline of International Relations from the position of postmodern approaches. The main goal is to examine whether and how feasible, useful, and usual is to work with the religious (and inseparable cultural) dimension of identity. The author claims that the concept of religious identity well reveals an important link between the religious and the political and represents a useful analytical tool. A categorisation and a model of identity are introduced and applied. The application is twofold, the categories are used in the academic discourse analysis and then once again it is used for the case of European identity in interactions of the EU and the RCC. Finally, the concept of the religious actor is discussed on this empirical basis and also the political construction of the religious, in general, is debated