CONTENTS
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
‘Religion at the European Parliament’: purposes, scope and limits of a survey on the religious beliefs of MEPs
François Foret
Religion at the European Parliament: an overview
François Foret
SMOOTH TRANSITION FROM NATIONAL CONCILIATION TO EUROPEAN BARGAIN?
A social role for churches and cultural demarcation: how German MEPs represent religion in the European Parliament
Anne Jenichen
Henrike Müller
‘A nation of vicars and merchants’: religiosity and Dutch MEPs
Didier Caluwaerts
Pieter-Jan De Vlieger
Silvia Erzeel
Consulting and compromising: the (non-) religious policy preferences of British MEPs
Martin Steven
MASTER AT HOME, EMBATTLED IN BRUSSELS?
French MEPs and religion: Europeanising ‘laïcité’?
François Foret
Defenders of faith? Victims of secularisation? Polish politicians and religion in the European Parliament
Magdalena Góra
Katarzyna Zielińska
Religion at the European Parliament: the Italian case
Stefano Braghiroli
Giulia Sandri
IN TRANSIT: FROM RELIGIOUS STRONGHOLD TO LIBERAL LABORATORY
Austrian MEPs: between privatisation and politicisation of religion
Julia Mourão Permoser
Politics and religion beyond state borders: the activity of Spanish MEPs on religious issues
Gloria Garcia-Romeral
Mar Griera
SO FAR, NOT SO DISSIMILAR: EUROPEAN ‘EXCEPTIONALISM’ CHALLENGED BY OTHER WESTERN CASES
Religion in the Israeli Parliament: a typology
Sharon Weinblum
Religion in the American Congress: the case of the US House of Representatives, 1953-2003
James L. Guth
CONCLUSION
Conclusion
François Foret
Notes
1. On the methodological advantages of the internet, see Farrell et al. (Citation2006).
2. The present research was financed by a starting grant from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and material support from this institution under diverse forms; funding by the Belgian scientific agency FNRS for the final conference; support from the Jean Monnet Chair ‘Social and Cultural Dimensions of European Integration – SocEUR’; and considerable resources, time and energy from all the contributors to this project. RelEP would not have been possible without this human investment.
3. The list offered to MEPs in order to identity their most frequent interlocutors is taken from the database of organisations registered at the EP and confirmed by exploratory interviews.
4. Questions are taken from European Values Study Survey 2008. (http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/evs/surveys/survey-2008.html) and from Special Eurobarometer 225: Social values, Science & Technology (fieldwork January – February 2005, publication June 2005), 7 (http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_225_report_en.pdf).