By Julie Krog Vistisen
The afternoon was driven by, among others, the speakers, sociologists of religion Linda Woodhead and Henrik Reintoft Christensen. In her British tongue, associate professor Linda Woodhead opened up the first presentation of the day. It was concerned with public religion in the British health system.
Among other things, Linda Woodhead's studes show that healing of illnesses has been marked by a high degree of spirituality up until 1945. But since then, the health system of the welfare state has had increasing success with pharmaceutic medicine, and a rational approach to illness and health has become the dominant one. Today it turns out that this type of medicine is losing the attention of the British. They are more interested in alternative forms of treatment with a holisitc view of the human being.
The person in the seat next to me joins the debate, explaining that citizens have become shoppers in a religious market where spirituality is also part of the religious. Linda Woodhead agrees, and if one affirms this, well, then it seems that religion is once again winning ground in the health system, since citizens are able to supplement the services of the health system with alternative forms of healing.
Woodhead explains that when the citizens choose spiritual forms of healing, the welfare state no longer has the unambiguous answer to what health is. In many cases, the welfare state takes into account the choices of the citizens to that the distribution of state resources matches the people. If the citizens' choice of forms of healing also has an influence upon the monetary services of the state, this will probably result in the return to the public sphere of a religious approach to the health system.
The second speaker at the seminar, Henrik Reintoft Christensen, then presented his and associate professor Lene Kühle's study of religion in the Danish parliament in the period from 1988 to 2008. A survey stemming from a larger Nordic project about religion in the public space: the presence of religious topics in Danish politics.
Their surveys show that religion has become a topic significantly more debated over the period in question. Especially the years between 2005 and 2008 have seen a notable increase in questions about religious topics, especially questions concerning Islam.Their survey of politicians' §20 questions shows a very distinct drop in questions about Christianity, counterbalanced by a corresponding increase in the number of questions about Islam between 1988 and 2008.
Several factors may contribute to explaining why this is the case. Professor Woodhead made the point that Christianity is a widespread religion in Denmark, and, for that reason, it isn't nearly as much debated. Immigration and Islam, on the contrary, is a controversial topic which consequently receives political attention. If one looks at recent development from 2008, Henrik Reintoft Christensen is of the observance that the economic crisis is given so much attention that the attention concerning Islam decreases correspondingly.
It was clear that the interest in the day's seminar was great. However, the three hours had to be broken up by way of a coffee and cake break, with room for unholy talk and chocolate sins.
