EU, State, Churches and CSOs

Communist as a form of modernisation has atomized Eastern and Central European societies. Religious communities and parishes were among social entities that could effectively oppose the forces destructing social ties. Our common goal is to analyse churches’ activities in promoting civil society in the region. The partners from PPKE, for instance, intend to approach this issue from within the two analytical frameworks: the first is the legal framework of the institutionalization of religious communities, especially that of new religious movements and religions of migrant groups; the second is the frameworks of civil society and the religious motivations urging individuals to social participation. An important issue of the subarea work is related to conceptualising of plurality of churches and denominations in Europe, both in the European East and West by focusing on the plurality of churches in Europe.  How is plurality related to the unity of churches? How were these relations perceived in the past? How will they be perceived in the nearest future? There questions are chosen by the partners from University of Vienna as their contribution to the subarea discussions. The MWF partners intend to analyse the relations between the religious and secular spheres by focusing on the conflicts generated by the interactions of these spheres and the tensions between different groups emerging inside the churches, as well as the influences of religion and religiosity on secular life. The colleagues from the University of Ljubljana will develop this topic further by looking at the roles of faith-based organizations as compared to other kinds of civil society organizations. Specific ideas come from the SZTE where the researches intend to focus their attention on various, mostly statistical, data sources with a specific interest in solidarity studies. They plan to create a model of solidarity and a model of charity valid for the CEE region and to identify possible connections of their findings with the social capital theory. They suppose that civil society organisations in CEE region exist only in a transitional state and that their reception is varied among other actor of the public, political and religious spheres. As a result, the scholars plan to create a model to describe the present situation of faith-based organisations through the latter’s roles, functions and social projects. Certainly, such ambitious undertaking requires the use of various data sources and extensive exchange of ideas – which we hope will be provided by the REVACERN general activities and by the scholarly networking within this subarea.

Kiss Dénes, Csata Zsombor, Kiss Tamás, Bogdan Blaga  (scientific assistance)  (MWF)

Ágnes Utasi, Gábor Nagy, Zsófia Barna, Szabolcs Illyés, Tamás Szilágyi, Gábor Feleky (SZTE)

Miklos Tomka (PPKE)

Vinko Potočnik, Igor Bahovec (ULI)

Regina Polak, Martin Jäggle, Inna Naletova (coordination and scientific assistance) (UV)