Societal Actions and Motivations

There are eight different topics in the subarea “Societal Actions and Motivations”, represented by five members of Revacern from four Institutions. The underlying conception of this research subarea is the fact, that religion is against many expectations arising from the secularization theses still an important determining factor of various social attitudes and actions. This question is especially interesting in Central and Eastern Europe, where communist regimes attempted to exclude religious impacts from other spheres of life for decades. After the fall of communism a religious revitalization is to be witnessed in lot of these countries while in others show a rather different development. The diversity of the process of religious change calls for an investigation of its effects at the societal level.

One of the topics deals explicitly with the heritage of the communist past by investigating the evaluation of the communist past in public opinion of different social strata. Both communism and the collapse of it brought important breaks in individual biographies. Even almost two decades after the end of communism social and especially political behaviour in societies of CEE is visibly influenced by the destiny of individuals in communism and by their views on the communist period. Such real or imagined memories shape value positions and religiosity or non-religiosity as well. Many people suffer under real or imagined victimization, whereas other ones enjoy a privileged position inherited from communism. Who the both groups are and how they react to their social and psychic disposition is a personally and politically relevant question which explains socio-political developments, especially tensions and conflicts. Certainly, age and the adherence to specific generations is crucial in defining the relevant past

Religious fundamentalism is an other key issue of this subarea. One has to reveal social traits which pro­mote and sustain peculiar religious identity. Its main trait is the use of creed which inclines to see opponents a threat to cultic and social purity, Such perception proves instrumental in catalysing unity within the fundamentalist groups, and galvanising their members into aggressive actions. Social sciences relate fundamentalism to the deep levels of insecurity within community, to the sense of having become aliens and strangers in what once was felt the fundamentalists’ heartland. The aim of qualitative analyses is to confirm or falsify the hypothesis about relation of religious fundamentalism and the sense of grievance resulting from the contingencies of history (societal change).

Two of the proposed topics concentrates on the relation of religiosity and morality. Comparative survey results show, that moral rigidity is more characteristic for Central and Eastern European societies, than for Western European, and under more plural religious and moral circumstances, religiosity is still a very important factor of moral rigidity. We have learnt also from numerous analyses of national survey data in CEE that religion has consequences in domain of morals, ie. as far as attitudes toward sexual life are concerned and towards restrictions related  to life termination (capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia). Moreover, there are many results showing religious determination of public ethic domain. The dimension of morality seemed to be the weakest component of religiosity among other dimensions such as religious experience, general identifications, institutional committment, religious practices and others, however one can show that religion has unneglectable moral consequences. The available data sets from national and comparative surveys make possible the presentation of domains which are under religious moral influence, which are instructed by religious teaching. It is also to be presented, to which extent moral pluralism and relativism is present in Central and Eastern European societies, how do they correlate with each other, and how is this relation influenced by the different types of religious affiliations, and the religious context (denominational tradition, degree of secularization).

Because of the intense difference of religiosity between the different age groups in CEE arising basically from the different patterns of socialization, the study of the religiosity of the younger generations became a very important issue after the fall of the communism. Recent studies of youth and values conducted in the Western countries stated the rising interest of young people in religious issues. At the same time, it was observed that subjectively stated religiosity of young people undergoes significant changes: an increasing churchlessness (detachment from churches) and a decline in concert religious forms practiced in everyday life go hand in hand with an increase in belief in God and longing for the “absolutely other.” Questions can be raised like : What does religion mean for young people in Central and Eastern Europe? How do young people in this region perceive religion? Which religious forms are observed? It is proposed in our subarea to investigate these questions and the social consequences of the different forms of religiosity/religiosities that characterises young people.

Last but not least, the relationship of dominant theological trends and the view of the society is also going to be studied under the topics of this subarea. Theology is the systematised thinking and teaching of religious institutions, in our concrete case not only of Christian churches and denominations, but all religious institutions. The thinking of religious population and of the whole society about religion and religious institutions depends deeply from a kind of theology, they are preferred by different religious institutions as official theaching and by different theologians as well.

Roy Wallis introduced a classification-system based on movements' views on and relationships with the world. The bases of his tipology on new religious movements the tripartiate typology (World-rejecting, World-accommodating, World-affirming thinking and corporate behavior) can be usefull for a sociological analysis of relations between religious institutions and society grounded by a theology of them.

One of the most important characteristics of the churches and denominations in CEE after 1990 is a kind of vacillation between ghettoising and opening. Both types of societal behaviours, the ghetto and the dialog are substantiated by specific theological options.

The issue of the relations between theology and society needs an interdisciplinary approach with both sociologists and theologians.