In the inaugural conference of the LMU’s Center for Advanced Studies (KFG) “Universalism and Particularism in European History,” scholars from Europe and the United States challenged the dichotomies supposedly presented by the conference title. The papers looked at the interplay between religion and secularism and how they relate to both particular and universal communities. The interdisciplinary presentations covered remarkably diverse topics including questions of burning contemporary importance such as the splits in Orthodoxy caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or long simmering issues such as Laïcité in France or communist regimes’ attitudes towards religion.

The first panel featured two presentations highlighting longue durée approaches to the universal and particular in different societies during different periods. JOSÉ CASANOVA (Washington D.C.) challenged the mutually exclusive self-understanding of secularism against religion and religion against secularism. Casanova pointed to the preamble of the Constitution of the European Union as an example of overcoming the supposed dichotomies between religion and secularism. The preamble made oblique references to god and religion; however, it did not embed Christianity in the text. Religion was left out of the legal document, but did underpin the European Constitution through a declaration of values. HANS JOAS (Berlin/ Chicago) utilized historical sociology to examine the long-term developments in moral universalism. Joas argued that moral universalism emerged at a point in human history and is therefore historically and culturally defined. He found answers to that question in the work of Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron and Karl Jaspers. According to Jaspers’ “Axial Age Thesis,” sometime between 800 and 200 BC several civilizations in central and eastern Asia independently concluded that there was some inherent unification among human beings. Moral universalism, according to Joas, predated a political universalism which claimed the right to rule the whole world. A fruitful discussion followed between Casanova and Joas about the validity of the Axial thesis and the emergence of Christian universalism compared to earlier, pre-Christian religions.

The second panel discussed the politics of immigration and memory. BRIAN VAN WYCK (Baltimore) analyzed diaspora politics among the Turkish community in Germany. Van Wyck looked at how official organizations such as the Turkish Foreign Ministry or the German Trade Union Organization (DGB) responded to increased Turkish worker presence in West Germany. Ironically, in their fear of Muslim immigrants, the German state in the 1970s embraced a view of “Turkish Islam,” which held that through focusing on the specifically “Turkish” aspects of Turkish immigrants, it would be possible to “Muslimize, nationalize, and secularize” the Turkish community. MATEUSZ MAJMAN (Munich) spoke about Holocaust memory among Mountain Jews of the North Caucuses since the Second World War. According to his presentation, memorialization of that event was localized to the extreme. When memorials to massacres were opened in the 1960s, they were tied to the Soviet victory day rather than in commemoration of the event. Majman showed that although the Soviet state distorted commemoration at a high level, at a grassroots level local communities kept the memory of the Holocaust alive, fighting for recognition of their experiences in Israel after the collapse of the USSR.

In the third panel, HÉLÈNE MIARD-DELACROIX (Paris), HELÉNA TÓTH (Bamberg), and JOHANNES GLEIXNER (Munich) spoke about the supposed secular challenges to religiosity by Republicanism and Communism. Hélène Miard-Delacroix discussed modern Laïcité as a particularly French model of secularism emerged at the end of the 19th century and cemented in the beginning of the 20th as a reaction to the Dreyfus Affair. Mutual independence of church and state also proved to be positive for churches, as for instance the state had to require one-half a day of the week free from school in order to allow for practices of the catechism. While being a particularly French term, Laïcité also had universalistic aspirations as it stresses the inclusion of many different religions with the ambition of universal validity.

Heléna Tóth followed this talk with a discussion of the adoption of Christian aesthetics in socialist rites of passage after the Second World War. This was not just a story of conflict between socialist and Christian rites of passage, but rather also showed, as Tóth put it, the “imprint of the fact” of traditionally Christian rituals on new socialist societies. Using examples including funerals, naming ceremonies and the requirements of “socialist personalities” Tóth pointed out that in numerous socialist countries Christian ceremonies were adopted with new socialist twists. Local clergy were not just fighting against communism, but also against new forms of religiosity being practices. Johannes Gleixner finished the panels of the first day by discussing socialist freethought in the early part of the 20th century. Socialist freethinkers attacked churches as political institutions but refused to attack religion itself. They were inherently universalist in their lifestyles, however their challenge was not to fight religion as such, but rather to create a new society.

JOHN CONNELLY (Berkeley) gave the evening keynote lecture at the end of the first day’s proceedings. He spoke about the rise of nationalism in Central Europe. At the beginning of his lecture, he asked why some countries developed a civic nationalism and others became ethnically nationalist. In the 19th century, Central European thinkers defined nationalism as freedom within a national community. According to him, the modern nation was a story, and the story of nationalism told in Central Europe by romantic nationalists was that of tragedy. Specifically, tragedy at the hands of foreign powers that required redemption. Redemption at the hands of foreign persecution required national self-determination and in the end an ethnic national self-definition as the founding principle of the nation-state. Connelly contrasted this with the examples of the French Revolution and the American Revolution, which he said were civic revolts against tyranny where the nation already existed. Focusing on Germany, Connelly pointed out that Germany was a post-imperial space of ethnic nationalism in the early 19th century. Occupied by France and divided by a weak central government, he argued the German nation’s weakness led to an aggressive imperialism in the form of ethnic nationalism.

The second day started with a presentation by MARTA BUCHOLC (Warsaw). She spoke about the discourse surrounding John Paul II in contemporary Poland. After a recent American documentary came out accusing John Paul of silence about child abuse in Krakow, the Polish government and Polish nationalist press attacked the documentary as an untrue defamation of a specifically Polish Pope. However, there were also periods of universalism in the image of the Pope. The figure of a specifically Polish national Pope was universalized during the end of the Cold War through his human rights activism. At the same time, Bucholc saw the possibilities of an alternative universalist vision of John Paul II in the making. An acknowledgement of John Paul as a flawed individual could make him seem negative but universally relatable. He could also be viewed in a conservationist light, or he could stand for a universal order whereby attacking a Pope means standing for chaos.

ZDENĔK R. NEŠPOR (Prague) discussed religious neo-nationalisms in Czechia and Slovakia. According to his presentation, the traditional understanding of Czechia is that it is an areligious or even anti-religious country, whereas Slovakia is quite religious with a preference of a dominant Catholic Church. Nešpor pointed out that neo-paganism nationalism attached to pan-Slavic ideas has seen a steady growth over the years. In the conclusion to the paper, Nešpor pondered whether this was part of a broad Central and Eastern Europe opposition to the current secular order.

In the final panel of the event, NADIESZDA KIZENKO (Albany) and NIKOLAY MITROKHIN (Bremen) spoke about the religious politics of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, respectively. Kizenko discussed how the Russian Orthodox Church since the early 2000s has increasingly utilized the language of human rights against those groups most likely to advance human rights. Kizenko closely analyzed a 2008 declaration by the church that acknowledged human dignity, but insisted that every culture had its own vision of rights. The Russian Orthodox Church, according to Kizenko, increasingly became the defender of traditional rights and the rights of individual cultures and peoples. In both the World Council of Families and the American Christian right, the Russian Orthodox Church became a “norm entrepreneur” that sometimes led and sometimes followed debates about norms all around the world. Nikolay Mitrokhin gave the final paper of the conference discussing the history of the split between the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC). While the splits between the two solidified in the 1990s and early 2000s, Mitrokhin showed how they found their origin with a localized religious movement in western Ukraine during the 1940s.

In their concluding discussion, the conference conveners MARTIN SCHULZE WESSEL (Munich), ANDREAS WIRSCHING (Munich), and KIRAN PATEL (Munich) discussed their visions for the Center. Andreas Wirsching said that the concepts of particularism and universalism were intentionally broad. This would help bring together diverse research projects to ask large questions about the present. Kiran Patel stated that chronology was a critical point to him. It was important to think about different turning points in the postwar history of particularism and universalism. Did the 1970s represent a turning point for particularism and universalism, or is 1989 the major turning point for contemporary history? Martin Schulze Wessel asked about the connections to early modern times. Beyond the postwar period, he wondered whether it was possible to connect contemporary history to the older debates about moral universalisms of communism in China and the Soviet Union or the universalist model of the United States. The conference organizers stressed that this was the start of their new program.

The conference raised many questions. The participants’ subjects varied to such an extent that it was difficult to draw generalizable conclusions. Common refrains included the role of the nation-state or international organizations in propagating specific and/or universalist values, and the relationship between universal/particular ideas and imperialism. Several of the most fruitful discussions revolved around questioning whether the universalism of recent human rights discourse might succumb to imperialist logic if not tempered by the recognition of national and cultural differences. The Center will continue to support more research and exchange to understand the complex interplay between these themes.

Conference overview:

Martin Schulze Wessel (Munich): Welcome and Introduction

Panel 1
Chair: Martin Schulze Wessel (Munich)

José Casanova (Washington D.C.): Mutual, Secular and Religious, Exclusive Claims to Universalism

Hans Joas (Berlin, Chicago): The Emergence of Moral Universalism in the Axial Age. Contours of a Contemporary Debate

Panel 2
Chair: Kiran K. Patel (Munich)

Brian Van Wyck (Baltimore): Muslimizing, Secularizing, Nationalizing: Universalism and Particularism in the Turkish Diaspora

Mateusz Majman (Munich): From Universal to Particular: the Transformation of Holocaust Memory among the Mountain Jews after the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Panel 3
Chair: Andreas Wirsching (Munich)

Hélène Miard-Delacroix (Paris): The Evolution of French Laicité: from a Political Pattern to a Secular Key Concept of Living Together in a Multicultural Society

Heléna Tóth (Bamberg): “if we can do what the church can!” The Competition for Structuring the Emotions of the “Socialist New Man” in the 1960s in Central Europe

Johannes Gleixner (Munich): “Politicizing Secularity”: Universalism as a Tool for Political Particularism

Keynote Lecture
John Connelly (Berkeley): Nation as Tragedy: The Story of East and Central Europe

Panel 4
Chair: José Casanova (Washington D.C.)

Marta Bucholc (Warsaw): The Historical Dynamics of Universalism and Particularism in the Discursive Framings of the Figure of John Paul II in Poland

Zdenĕk R. Nešpor (Prague): Saving the Nation via Religion, or Religious Eleements in Czech and Slovak Neo-nationalisms

Panel 5
Chair: Marta Bucholc (Warsaw)

Nadieszda Kizenko (Albany): Human Rights and Values Discourses in the Russian Orthodox Church

Nikolay Mitrokhin (Bremen): Transregional and Universal Religious Orientation versus State Expectations of Loyalty. Orthodoxy in Ukraine from World War II to the Present

Concluding Discussion