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Based on the empirical results of the European Values Study 2017 and on discussion with our authors and experts, the article highlights four thematical areas that raise critical questions and require practical consequences in society, politics, education, and research as well as within religious communities. The selected topics aim at stimulating values debates and focus on a broader audience of disseminators who are concerned about promoting a qualified values discourse in Europe in the context of contemporary multifold global crises. First, the results document a severe crisis of liberal democracy, which is fuelled by the ambivalent power of values and requires, for example, more attention being paid to subsidiarity in values communication, the struggle between universal and particular values, and the values division between Western and Eastern Europe. Second, the role of religion as a problem or a component for solving the crises of liberal democracy is discussed. The extent to which religion can be a resource for promoting universal and normative values is shown, with consideration of the challenges that religious communities and actors face in this regard. Third, the need for values education is highlighted, including the strengthening of the role of religion and religious values, which is considered to be of social, and political concern. Fourth, challenges for inter- and transdisciplinary research are identified. These include revising the concepts of the European Values Study, the need to think beyond the ‘secularisation box’, and the necessity for increased communication between values research, society, and politics.
Based on the empirical results of the European Values Study 2017 and on discussion with our authors and experts, the article highlights four thematical areas that raise critical questions and require practical consequences in society, politics, education, and research as well as within religious communities. The selected topics aim at stimulating values debates and focus on a broader audience of disseminators who are concerned about promoting a qualified values discourse in Europe in the context of contemporary multifold global crises. First, the results document a severe crisis of liberal democracy, which is fuelled by the ambivalent power of values and requires, for example, more attention being paid to subsidiarity in values communication, the struggle between universal and particular values, and the values division between Western and Eastern Europe. Second, the role of religion as a problem or a component for solving the crises of liberal democracy is discussed. The extent to which religion can be a resource for promoting universal and normative values is shown, with consideration of the challenges that religious communities and actors face in this regard. Third, the need for values education is highlighted, including the strengthening of the role of religion and religious values, which is considered to be of social, and political concern. Fourth, challenges for inter- and transdisciplinary research are identified. These include revising the concepts of the European Values Study, the need to think beyond the ‘secularisation box’, and the necessity for increased communication between values research, society, and politics.
The concept of values builds the ‘umbrella’ of this interdisciplinary volume. But what ‘are’ values? Our volume documents, that values are a contested concept. In this chapter, I want to discuss the polysemic and ambiguous meanings and functions of this term and identify its strengths and weaknesses for public and political discourse. In this way, a more qualified and differentiated reference to values shall be promoted, particularly in the debates about European values. The discussion of values will be achieved using three approaches. First, the concept of values used in the European Values Study (EVS) will be presented. As the EVS does not claim a clear definition of values, a thematic problem outline will, second, reflect the questions, problems, and difficulties occurring in an unreflected usage of this contested term, with a special focus on the relationship between values and religion. Third, an overview of diverse academic definitions and theories of values demonstrates that there is no unique and conclusive definition of this concept. However, this article aims at providing arguments for why exactly the polysemy and ambiguity of the concept of values can be perceived as a strength, if we are aware of the problems and relate them to the results of values research. Thus, we purposely abstain from a final definition of values and hope to inspire further qualified interdisciplinary research, which is a desideratum that has become visible in our project.
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