Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article aims to show the role and evolution of religion in the cultural policy and political discourse of the Council of Europe. The first part reconstructs the history of religious issues as they have been presented from the Council’s inception, and traces how the organization has shifted towards a new approach to religion in the direction of cultural and religious relativism, changing in the same time its whole axiological system. The second part discusses and combines the cultural policy of CoE with the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in the area of freedom of artistic expression (Art. 10) and religious sentiment. Article suggests that the Council of Europe in sensitive areas – of which religion is certainly one, being aware of the existence in Europe of deeply-rooted axiological and cultural pluralism - is often avoiding radical stances. The research has uncovered that even as the Council of Europe was founded in part upon principles and values deriving from Christianity, it has reached a position of not emphasizing those axiological foundations anymore.
Author: Anita Budziszewska
Institution: University of Warsaw
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4410358262