English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

The public role of religion has been a recurrent topic of debate in the sociology of religion. This debate gained momentum with José Casanova’s book Public Religions in the Modern World (1994) in which he claimed that a worldwide deprivatization of religion was taking place. Only a few years later, Peter L. Berger (1999) argued that large parts of the world were characterized by desecularization, even if Europe continued to be secular. In 2006, Jürgen Habermas labelled modern, Western societies as postsecular (Habermas, 2006). The question that forms the title of Titus Hjelm’s (2015) book Is God back? is indeed pertinent in debates on the public sphere in Nordic countries. During the past decades, new interfaith infrastructures have emerged in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland that enable a great variety of faith communities to participate as civil society actors in the public sphere. Whereas the Nordic Lutheran majority churches previously had hegemonic positions in the public sphere as it related to religious issues, new channels of communication have developed that change the ways in which faith and worldview communities act in the public sphere. The emergence of the new religious infrastructure also seems to have implications for the type of religion that is present in the public sphere. This chapter will map these developments and attempt to explain them. In the following, we outline the Nordic religious landscapes and the theoretical perspectives that are used. The development of the Nordic interfaith infrastructure is then described, including some critical issues that this development has raised. We then conclude with a discussion of various explanations for the institutional changes that are outlined.

11 The Return of Religion in the Public Sphere? The Public Role of Nordic Faith Communities