The goal of this book is to understand the interplay between religion and the institutions and processes that constitute the European Union. François Foret pursues this broad goal by focusing on several dimensions of European politics: the religious views of the members of the European Parliament (MEPs), the role of Christian Democracy in the emergence of the European Union, the extent to which religious motivations affect the functioning of the EU in terms of appointments and policy making, and finally the potential role of religion as an external boundary setter for the EU. To explore the role of religion along these different dimensions, Foret uses a variety of empirical strategies such as surveys conducted with MEPs, studies of critical historical events, and analyses of party platforms. His main conclusions are twofold. First, within the EU, the denominational differences and the religious-secular divide no longer remain as major socio-political cleavages. Second, despite its declining role, religion still serves as a symbolic, and at times emotionally powerful, resource that highlights the differences between ideological groups within the EU as well as the differences between Europeans and outsiders.

Understanding the role of religion in EU politics today and charting the overtime evolution of this role are both worthy and timely goals. There is a rich literature on how religion influenced the historical emergence of state institutions and political parties in specific European countries. By contrast, the interaction between religion and the supra-national institutions of the EU has been relatively understudied. Moreover, the apparent surge in Islamic fundamentalism in Europe and the way the EU as a supranational organization deals with this development is of both theoretical and political importance.

Despite the timeliness of the project, there are three aspects of Religion and Politics which prevent the book from fully achieving its goals. First, the book does not employ a theoretical lens or a set of theoretical lenses that are systematically used throughout the study to understand the interplay between religion and politics within the EU. As a result, Religion and Politics provides interesting descriptive narratives on issues such as the selection of MEPs, the emergence of the EU, or the question of expansion, but it does not provide the reader with an understanding of how the separate narratives and findings across different chapters add up to a more complete theoretical understanding of the role of religion in EU affairs.

The lack of a coherent theoretical grounding is a missed opportunity for the book as the narratives used in some individual chapters actually hint at potential theoretical lenses that could have been systematically applied throughout the book. One such lens relates to why (and, by implication, when) religious issues come to the fore in EU politics. At different points, the discussion highlights three potential underlying reasons. First, it is possible that the primary role of religion is as an ideology that provides a set of political goals or policy recommendations in specific areas. This approach is visible in the discussion on the role of denominational influences on welfare and health policies (pp. 165–170) and, to a lesser extent, in parts of the discussion that relate to the impact of Christian Democracy on the emergence of the EU (p. 47). The second possibility is that because religion tends to be an emotionally appealing issue, politicians use religious rhetoric to achieve their goals on non-religious political dimensions. This type of approach is more predominant when the author discusses the Buttiglione Affair or the question of Turkish membership in the EU. In short, the narrative suggests that when reacting to these issues, the politicians and bureaucrats in the EU were aiming to achieve goals unrelated to religion such as attracting media coverage, retaining the balance between left or rightwing parties, or obtaining institutional advantages (pp. 143–154; pp. 104–5). The book also offers a third, and potentially more original, reason for why politicians might at times choose to emphasize religious questions or put a religious cloak on non-religious issues. In an environment where the political operatives face uncertainty about each other’s general political leanings, religious symbols can serve as a signal for identifying alike actors and forming networks. This type of theoretical lens becomes important when the author discusses the role of Christian Democracy in the formation of EU as well as when he focuses on the socialization of political actors such as MEPs and lobbies in Brussels (p. 49; pp. 109–112; pp. 119, 129–130).

These three approaches, which can roughly be labelled “religion as ideology,” “religion as object of manipulation,” and “religion as signal,” are theoretically distinct and have different empirical implications for how politicians and voters operate. It would have significantly improved the coherence of the book and highlighted its contributions if they had been used as theoretical anchors throughout the chapters as well as when summarizing the conclusions.

The second way in which the book could have been more effective in achieving its goals is through more persistent usage of structured comparisons that are designed to answer specific research questions. There are points in the book when comparisons indeed serve this purpose. For example, the comparisons across individual MEPs yields interesting conclusions such as the observation that even for those MEPs who most frequently ask questions related to religion, religious questions constitute a tiny (less than 10%) share of the questions asked (pp. 105–107). There are, however, also research questions that the book raises but falls short of answering. One example is the question of “Is it necessary (and sufficient) to be a Christian Democrat to be a builder of Europe?” (p. 39). The discussion that follows this question is quite detailed and informative on the Christian Democratic Parties and their evolution but lacks a comparable discussion on how the other prominent group of political parties in Europe, the Social Democrats, talked and behaved at the time of EU’s emergence. Yet, without a systematic comparison of these two types of parties, it is essentially impossible to answer the question posed.

Finally, the book does not pay sufficient attention to a critical question that relates to the role of religion in the EU: How does the unification process affect the significant Muslim populations and their leaders in various European countries? As Foret astutely observes, the tensions created by events such as the Danish Cartoons Affair or the Muslim veil question result from the conflict between the relatively secularized and liberal European mindset that has emerged over centuries and the relatively religiously conservative mindset of the Muslim immigrant population. Given that this conflict has become progressively more prominent in European affairs and the book’s primary focus is the role of religion in the EU, I would have expected Religion and Politics to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the interplay between the emergence of a European supra-national identity and the identity politics of the Muslims in this context.

The three critiques that I have suggested do not take away from the fact that Religion and Politics is an interesting, timely, and extensive account of the role of religion in the EU. They only indicate that future work on religion in the EU can improve on Foret’s study by making more consistent use of abstract theoretical approaches and structured comparisons as well as by offering a more comprehensive understanding of the interaction between the growing European Muslim population and the process of European Unification.