Constitutional Politics and Religious Accommodation: Lessons from Spain
This article sketches the struggles over and the shifting role of Catholicism in the Spanish body politic. It begins by providing a brief overview of the deep historical ties between Catholicism and Spanish identity. It continues by recounting the dialectical process through which a serious social c...
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
2015
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In: |
Politics, religion & ideology
Year: 2015, Volume: 16, Issue: 4, Pages: 411-433 |
Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Summary: | This article sketches the struggles over and the shifting role of Catholicism in the Spanish body politic. It begins by providing a brief overview of the deep historical ties between Catholicism and Spanish identity. It continues by recounting the dialectical process through which a serious social cleavage on the role of religion in politics emerged and percolated over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This cleavage ultimately pit a militant and reactionary brand of authoritarian Catholicism on the right against an equally militant group of secularist ideologues associated with both bourgeois-republican and revolutionary working class (mainly anarchist) political forces. Following Juan Linz, the article emphasizes the nefarious role played by constitution-makers who pursued a partisan secularizing agenda on questions of Church and state in the breakdown of democracy and tragic onset of Civil War. It then delineates the ideology and institutionalization of ‘national-Catholicism' under Franco, before turning to contrast republican-era constitution-making dynamics with those of the transition to democracy following Franco's death. It concludes with a discussion of the content of post-transition conflicts over religion and politics, highlighting the constitutional resources for coping with the somehow new yet very old challenge posed by the presence of Islam. |
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ISSN: | 2156-7697 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Politics, religion & ideology
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/21567689.2015.1132414 |