Cultural and Religious Diversity in Portugal

In recent decades, Europe has undergone a process of cultural and religious recomposition characterized by its conversion into a continent of immigration rather than emigration. This profound transformation, brought about by globalization, the de-privatization of religion and new waves of migration, has forced the continent to be more aware of its cultural and religious diversity and to deal with its underlying challenges. Even in the most peripheral countries of Europe, such as Portugal, this phenomenon has had consequences, particularly in the more urbanized regions, such as the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, where the growing phenomenon of religious heterogeneity has become more evident and challenging for Portuguese secularism based on the secular relationship with a Catholic canopy. This chapter, therefore, aims to examine the process of secularization in Portugal, considering the evolution of the country’s cultural diversity. The goal is to analyse the religious decomposition and recomposition of Portuguese society between the early 1980s and the end of the 2010s. Against the theoretical backdrop of secularization, this research allows us to interpret, through a qualitative and quantitative, hypothetical-deductive analysis, the transformations of religion in a Western European society. We conclude that increasing levels of cultural diversity contribute to the weakening of unquestionable truths and the fragmentation of traditional religious cultures.