FBK-ISR | New religious policies wanted. How to handle religious pluralism in the post-secular era

Only a few years ago, both religions as social actors and religion as a spiritual phenomenon appeared to be in sharp decline. Today, on the contrary, it is difficult to interpret social, political and geopolitical dynamics regardless of the presence of religious actors in the field. This is what we call post-secularization. And one of the aspects that best characterizes it is religious pluralism, in the Italian case above all the “new religious pluralism” determined by the arrival of new faith communities and by their active participation in public space. There are many questions that derive from this new framework: first of all, what changes in a country like Italy characterized by a solid mono-confessional heritage? More generally, how do relations between states and religious confessions change? Faced with these new and diversified presences, is it necessary to redefine the concept of “secularism”? What challenges for the policies of management of religious phenomena on the territory, even within the framework of local autonomies?

Speaker
Paolo Naso is coordinator of the Council for Islam at the Ministry of the Interior. On behalf of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy, he directs the study commission and the “Mediterranean Hope – Refugees and Migrants” intervention program. He has a long experience of collaboration with the national government and local institutions. He teaches Political Science at Sapienza University of Rome where he also coordinates the Masters in Religions and Cultural Mediation. He is a member of the Board of the Italian Association of Sociology of Religion. Among his works we remember, the post-secular incognita. Religious pluralism, Fundamentalisms, Secularism, Guide 2015; Pentecostals, EMI, 2013; Like a city on the hill. The Puritan tradition and the civil rights movement, Claudiana 2008. Outgoing (with Maurizio Ambrosini and Claudio Paravati) The God of immigrants, Il Mulino; and (with Alessia Passarelli), Intercultural Generation. The young evangelicals of immigration, Carocci.

Please find more more about the other meetings here