The OAR is participating in the Biennial of Thought with a conversation and a roundtable of experiences on the dynamics between democracy and religion
‘Religions and democracies: Perspectives and dialogues on governance and religion’ is an activity that the OAR is organising as part of the Biennial of Thought, which focuses on Barcelona being named the first European Capital of Democracy. The event will consist of a conversation and a roundtable of experiences and will be held on Friday 11 October at 4 pm at the Urgell Civic Centre.
During Barcelona’s Biennial of Thought, the city’s public spaces become hubs of reflection on essential issues of today. This year, the Biennial will be held from 8 to 13 October as part of the first edition of the European Capital of Democracy, for which Barcelona was chosen to be the venue for a range of workshops and participative activities on local and European politics and democracy, which have been housed in the city since the autumn of 2023.
Around these reflections, religion is particularly salient for two reasons: first, because of its connection with the plural realities that characterise European cities today, and secondly because of religious and spiritual organisations’ ability to put into practice forms of participation and democracy unlike more conventional forms of democracy.
For this reason, within this twofold framework, the Office for Religious Affairs (OAR) is organising the activity entitled ‘Religions and democracies: Perspectives and dialogues on governance and religion’ (as part of the +Biennial programme), which will question different points related to both the religion-democracy issue and the separation between church and state that undergirds many western European democracies. The activity will revolve around questions like: How can spirituality influence democratic activity? How can it influence the shaping of national identities? Is it possible to imagine a democratic society where religious organisations play a clear role in the state administration? Do religious or spiritual organisations have tools that can be described as ‘internal democracy’? How can religious diversity offer successful experiences in the relationship between organisations and democratic states?
In order to reflect on these questions, the OAR’s activity, conducted and moderated by Oumaya Amghar Ait Moussa, advisor of the Executive Presidency and General Direction of the IEMed, will be divided into two spaces. First, a conversation will be held in which the different connections between religions and democracies in different places around the world will be outlined. The participants will be Estrella Samba Campos, PhD in Arab Studies and multidisciplinary researcher, and Gemma Celigueta Comerma, member of the Research Group on Indigenous and Afro-American Cultures (CINAF).
The second part of the activity will be a roundtable of experiences on participation and internal democracy in Barcelona’s religious and spiritual communities. The participants will include representatives from the Young Seventh-Day Adventists of Catalonia, the Association of Bahà’í Women of Barcelona and the Brotherhood of Catholic Works Action (GOAC).
The Biennial of Thought, organised by the Barcelona Institute of Culture (ICUB), is an initiative that discusses and questions the established order, in which different Barcelona venues and institutions have been addressing current issues from a critical perspective based on their own areas of expertise since 2018, as the OAR has been doing since 2022.
The debates, lectures and workshops in this year’s edition, entitled ‘L’endemà de tot’ [The Day After It All], will revolve around the challenges that cities are facing today and will face in the future, as well as other more cross-cutting issues like globalisation, inequality and ecology. The goal is to promote innovation and to strengthen democracy in Europe on the local and metropolitan scale.
RELIGIONS AND DEMOCRACIES: PERSPECTIVES AND DIALOGUES ON GOVERNANCE AND RELIGION
- Date: Friday, 11 October
- Venue: Urgell Civic Centre (Carrer del Comte d’Urgell, 145)
- Time: 4 to 7:30 pm, with a break in the middle
- Registration: activitatsoar@bcn.cat. Free admission, limited capacity.
If you have any accessibility requirements, please let us know when you register (by emailing activitatsoar@bcn.cat.