With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War in 1989 a new optimism arose and people thought that it would be the beginning of a new, prosperous and peaceful period in world history. This optimism soon disappeared and it became clear that, contrary to popular optimistic belief, the world had become more complex than ever before. Problems that were once in the background of political attention were now right at the centre, such as rivalry among neighbouring countries, regional wars and migration. Where 19th century sociologists thought that through modernisation societies would turn away from religion and become thoroughly secularised, these ideas are now questioned by the global rise of conflicts coming forth from concerns over religious instances influencing state politics, society and ethics. Though contemporary problems are many and diverse, it seems that these current problems are increasingly framed in a cultural, religious sense. With the events of 9/11 this new division is intensified further and the prospect of clashing civilisations does not seem that far away any more.              

News coverage around the world shows that secularisation is not a factor on a global scale and that religion is still at the heart of many people’s understanding of their lives. Through the process of globalisation, people are informed of events happening all over the world and feel influenced by them. In this respect culture is no longer encapsulated within local communities, with various cultural boundaries rooted in different cultural components. World society, however, is not a global and unified society, but is in fact made up of social groups that differ in their practices, beliefs and institutions. In this a paradox arises between a growing global cultural homogeneity and the ongoing creation of new cultural diversity. Rather than creating massive cultural homogeneity on a global scale, the world system is replacing local diversity by global diversity; and this new diversity is, relatively speaking, based more on inter-relations and less on autonomy.   

Up to now it has been the state, in the main, that constitutes the framework for social life. But the growing cultural, ideological and religious diversity has contributed to the questioning of the concept of this ‘Western nation’ state. Borne by the globally accepted discourse of “identity as a right”, ethnic and/or regional groups and religious communities enter the public domain in order to make collective claims, a crucially important consequence of which is that the moral basis for social solidarity needs to be reinterpreted. Rather than national ideologies it is the trans-national ideologies, ethnic movements and feelings of religious belonging that increasingly affect local life and form the basis for moral solidarity.

Since the last quarter of the twentieth century and particularly in Western Europe, the taken-for-granted effects of secularization processes, privatized religion and the liberal view on the individual citizen, have been put into question by intensified contacts over the global sphere and by an increased number of migrants with different understandings of religion, culture and public life. As a consequence, the ideas and practices of religious and civic co-existence are shifting; public space has diversified beyond imagination. Plurality has become a fact.