a b s t r a c tIn the last few years, since Portugal has become home to a great number of immigrants, the religious situation has changed significantly in the urban centers of the country. This article sets out the initial findings of a project that is studying this new religious diversity in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon. In this sense, the principal aim is to show the first broad outlines of the new religious plurality in Lisbon. Theoretical introductionThe profound metamorphosis in the religious landscape of modern (European) societies, which started in the 1960s, has given rise to a scientific discussion that often ends with suggestions of the 'disappearance of religion'. The return of religion into the public realm a few years later caused some astonishment and was the result, principally, of two factors: A) the notable increase in migratory movements and B) the appearance of the so-called 'new religions' that were often born in a 'cultic milieu' (Campbell, 1972) that was not connected to the typical religious (Christian) tradition of these societies. As of this time, one spoke terminologically of a religious plurality 1 that increasingly marked modern societies. The debate on this religious plurality was inaugurated in large part within American sociology, namely in the works of Peter L. Berger. He defended the thesis, quite early on, that secularization does not lead to any disappearance of religion, but rather to a pluralisation of the religious landscape (Berger, 1967(Berger, , 1969. This thesis was considered for a long time as the heuristic model for modern sociology of religion and, primarily within the discipline of religious studies, an ample interest in this new concept of religious plurality was born. In the 1980s, a sociological theory of religion emerged that criticized a weak point in this thesis of religious pluralisation, pointing to the fact that Berger considered that secularization and pluralisation caused a decrease in the traditional authority of religions. On the contrary, this theory suggests that plurality fosters a certain competition between religions, thus stimulating an increase in the number of religious groups. This theory was based on economic rationality, in the sense that religious competition leads to active engagement of religious groups by responding to public demands. The consequence of this competition is a growing religious vitality. For that reason, this assumption was described, namely by Finke and Stark (1988), as rational choice theory of religion (other authors defined it as supply side theory or market place theory). More recently, another one of Berger's suggestions, namely, his declaration that religious plurality is a typical phenomenon of modernity, was criticized. This declaration seems dubious once you look at the religious history of the European continent, which since antiquity has been marked by religious plurality (Kippenberg and Stuckrad, 2003, 131; see Dix, 2008 on religious plurality in Portuguese religious history). From this standpoint, religious p...
The religious history of Portugal is usually told as the history of a monolithic Catholic belief-system that excludes other religious options. Contrasting this tendency, there is also a political—anticlerical—construction that regards the Catholic tradition as the origin of economic, intellectual, or even ethical backwardness. Taken together, these presuppositions make it difficult to provide an impartial description of the religious situation in Portugal, both contemporary and historical. The present article intends to challenge those theological and political agendas and to replace their historical narratives with a more pluralistic picture of religion in Portugal.
By analysing the result of a survey conducted in 2018 in the most populated metropolis in Portugal, this study seeks to make a sociological characterisation of ‘believers without religion’ from a dual perspective: on one hand, their proximity to the non-believers groups regarding religious practices; on the other hand, their adjacency to Portuguese cultural Catholicism with respect to beliefs and attitudes. The growth of this population expresses a paradox: their identity accounts for the subsistence of fragments of a late traditional religiosity, but also points to the emergence of new forms of individual beliefs, strongly marked by the effects of the ‘subjective turn.’ In this context, the lack of institutional regulation does not convey an undetermined universe of believers. Paradoxically, references to cultural Catholicism endure; however, they do so hand in hand with forms of religious abandonment, giving rise to various paths that lead to a growing estrangement from Catholicism.
Modernism in the early 20th century has usually been viewed as a radical break with the past and tradition. Nevertheless, there are a great deal of direct references to classical antiquity in many works of modernist artists. This apparent contradiction forces us to rethink the notion of a radical break between the new and the past. It is with this in mind that the present article focuses on one of the most exiting periods in European cultural history. In particular, the article refers to two attempts to revitalize classical antiquity during the first decades of the 20th century. These two attempts are illustrated by the Portuguese writer, Fernando Pessoa, and the Italian painter, Giorgio de Chirico. Their works are not only characteristic of the marked revival of classical antiquity in the first years of Modernism, but they also reveal that this revival is more than a simple “new classicism”. Insofar as this new/ past dualism, the work of Pessoa and de Chirico should be better described as an updated mythological thinking.
Obwohl der Prozess der Säkularisierung in Portugal Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts begann, bewies der Katholizismus dennoch in bestimmten historischen Perioden die Kraft, die portugiesische Gesellschaft zu beeinflussen und zu durchdringen. Zu anderen Zeiten verlor er hingegen diese Fähigkeit und schien zur Bedeutungslosigkeit verurteilt. Somit kann man von einer Art Fluktuation zwischen Phasen der Säkularisierung und Desäkularisierung in der Religionsgeschichte Portugals sprechen. Um diese Hypothese zu untermauern, werde ich darlegen, was den portugiesischen Katholizismus in die Lage versetzte, sich in die gesellschaftliche Diskussion einzuschalten, und zwar bezüglich a) ethischer und sozialer Fragestellungen; b) der Korrektur oder Kritik politischer bzw. ökonomischer Entscheidungen; c) der Bewahrung traditioneller Glaubensvorstellungen und Bräuche sowie d) einer Stabilisierung der portugiesischen Identität. Diese Einflussnahme wird innerhalb vier verschiedener Epochen mit völlig unterschiedlichen sozialen und politischen Verhältnissen vergleichend dargestellt. Daraus ergeben sich folgende Schlüssel-fragen: Ist die Säkularisierung zwangsläufig ein linearer und irreversibler Prozess? Mit welchen Mitteln gelang es dem traditionellen portugiesischen Katholizismus, sich seine Vitalität und Bedeutung in einer weitgehend säkularisierten Umwelt zu erhalten? In welcher Weise greifen die »säkulare« und die »religiöse« Sphäre in einer modernen europäischen Gesellschaft aufeinander über? 1. Einleitung Nachdem es für lange Zeit den Anschein hatte, Säkularisierung sei ein nahezu un-
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