Catholic and Christian Democratic Views on Europe Before and After WW II: Continuities and Disontinuities

© The Author(s) 2018. Pasture explores how Christian Democrats conceived of “Europe” in the 1940s and 1950s, in the fledgling years of European integration. In particular, he reconstructs both continuities and discontinuities across the traditional caesura in twentieth-century European history: World War II. Pasture defines shifting trends in how Catholics and Christian Democrats imagined “Europe” this allows him to map a new spatial geography of European Christian Democracy. The outcome de-centers the confessional commitments of well-known Western Europeans like Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer, instead creating a space for a pluralistic understanding of “Europe”, with varying confessional and ideological commitments. Pasture’s argument offers a foundation for understanding how activists from across the Iron Curtain, too, could forge a European identity in the first decades of the Cold War.status: publishe

Cari Strikwerda. A House Divided. Catholics, Socialists and Nationalists in Nineteenth- Century Belgium.

Pasture Patrick. Cari Strikwerda. A House Divided. Catholics, Socialists and Nationalists in Nineteenth- Century Belgium.. In: Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, tome 78, fasc. 2, 2000. Histoire medievale. moderne: et contemporaine - Middeleeuwse, modhrnf en hedendaagse geschiedenis. pp. 601-604

Religion in contemporary Europe: contrasting perceptions and dynamics

Firstly, this article critically reviews Europe's self-perception as a secular continent that has been able to overcome its innate diversity by developing tolerance. It identifies this self-perception as a secularist myth which not only ignores the impact Christian churches had on modern European societies, but also disregards the totalitarian tendencies within European modernity. However, postwar Europe transformed fundamentally, as the social and religious structures inherited from the late nineteenth century disintegrated. A new socio-religious landscape arose, which appears fundamentally fluid as individuals become masters of their own religious identity and blur the traditional boundaries not only between denominations, but also between the sacred and the secular. This situation, paradoxically, may generate new forms of stability, incidentally not only fundamentalistic ones. Secondly, the article briefly discusses the significance of European integration for the religious identity of Europe, raising the question of convergence. In addition, it argues to discuss European contemporary history in a more global perspective which should include Europe's colonial past.status: publishe

Between a Christian Fatherland and Euro-Christendom

This essay assesses the different ways in which the Catholic Church in particular related to either the nation-state or the idea of a European federation (while leaving aside attitudes towards larger forms of “internationalism”, including the League of Nations), from roughly the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, into the period after the Second World War. I will mainly focus on Catholics, since Protestants, especially Lutherans, hardly expressed views on the nation as Christians and, even less, on Europe, as they accepted in principle the autonomy of the secular. I look at different societal actors, which for the Catholic world includes the Holy See as well as the clergy high and low, confessional and Christian democratic parties and movements, social and cultural associations and individual thinkers.status: publishe

Luyten (Dirk). Sociaal-economisch overleg in België sedert 1918.

Pasture Patrick. Luyten (Dirk). Sociaal-economisch overleg in België sedert 1918.. In: Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, tome 76, fasc. 4, 1998. Histoire medievale, moderne et contemporaine - Middeleeuwse, moderne en hedendaagse geschiedenis. pp. 1147-1149

Syndicats et associations en France et en Europe, une interrogation sur les originalités françaises

Patrick Pasture Le regard porté sur les contributions rassemblées dans cet ouvrage est le regard distancié d'un historien belge, familier de la recherche sur les syndicats et les associations, dans une perspective comparative et transnationale, comme il l'est de l'histoire française. Cette familiarité n'interdit pas un profond sentiment de dépaysement face à (certaines) des réalités ici décrites et analysées mais, aussi bien, face aux pratiques et aux approches des historiens, politistes et s..

Tocqueville Revisited. Transatlantic Perspectives on Modernity, Democracy and Christianity in Europe and North-America (c 1650-1860)

status: publishe

Pascal Dewit & José Gotovitch (eds.). La peur du rouge

Pasture Patrick. Pascal Dewit & José Gotovitch (eds.). La peur du rouge. In: Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, tome 76, fasc. 4, 1998. Histoire medievale, moderne et contemporaine - Middeleeuwse, moderne en hedendaagse geschiedenis. pp. 1112-1115

Japan in global history: questioning Europe, questioning Japan

In older world histories Japan was presented as the quintessential example of modernization following Western examples. This narrative has been seriously put in perspective by the New Global History, which 'provincialized' Europe's impact. This approach however also goes a long way to 'provincializing' Japan.status: publishe