RELIGION AND POLITICS: BASIC IDEAS CORRELATION IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29038/2524-2679-2025-01-214-225Keywords:
religion, policy, political discourse, Christianity, democracy, political identity, Europe, UkraineAbstract
The article is devoted to revealing the correlation of the basic ideas of religion and politics, which have been embodied in the modern European political dis- course.
The origins of democratic values and principles of democratic government can be found in the discourse of Christianity (law of universal love, educational pro- paganda of Christianity, basic life values, creation of an open society, etc.). De- mocracy was born and developed in the West, in countries with an ancient Chris- tian tradition, its secular humanism is based on the principles of Christian values. Freedom, equality and fraternity – the basic categories of democracy – are noth- ing but “evangelical values”. In Christianity, individual freedom is limited by commandments. The secular projection of this Christian principle involves the restriction of freedom by the provisions of laws, not by ethical commandments. The ideas of separation of powers, progress, etc. are also a kind of projection of Christianity.
The attitude to time in European culture, being determined by the Christian para- digm of temporality, acts as a kind of secularization of the religiously shaped perception of eschatological time. Thus, the idea of the “Arrow of Time” directed from the past through the present to the future (“from beginning to end”) became a kind of prototype of the idea of progress.
The problem of individualism – basic for modern liberal-democratic discourse – also originates in the evangelical individualism of Christianity.
At the political and cultural level, certain parameters of the European identity correlate with the parameters of the Ukrainian identity. Considering, on the one hand, the Christian and democratic intentions of European culture, and, on the other hand, the dominant role of the ideas of Christianity and democracy in Ukrai- nian culture, it is possible to assert a close correlation of the specified parameters of European and Ukrainian identities. Perception of the ideas of freedom, equal- ity, individualism, etc. relate Ukrainian and European identities.
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