Churches and Federal State in Europe: the paradigm of Germany and Switzerland

Abstract

Facing a renewed role of religion in the public square, we can say that Germany and Switzerland are facing off a “positive secularism“ which implies, for the State legal system and for its institutions, the respect of religious facts, having its embodiment in the neutral and pluralistic acceptation of cultural differences and aiming at shaping their coexistence and the construction of their meaning. Positive secularism implies that the factual presence of religious confessions in the civil society is an essential condition to the positive start of a process of "secularisation of secularism", implying first of all the overcoming of political hegemony on every dimension of human experience - thing to which any thought open to the hypothesis of transcendence can effectively contribute. According to this concept, the secularism of a democratic State must free itself more and more from any ideological assumption, in order to open to cultural and religious pluralism and to let this pluralism become an instrument of promotion of the development of a person. For this reason, the State ruled by positive secularism cannot be completely indifferent to the religious phenomenon - even if it guarantees the free practice of religion by individuals - and only qualify confessions as simple expressions of the associative autonomy of private citizens