Nationalism and religion in south-east Poland

Juraj BuzalkaComenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia

buzalka@fses.uniba.sk

Paper presented at the conference ‘Nationalism and National Identities Today: Multidisciplinary Perspectives’, Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and

Multiculturalism (CRONEM), University of Surrey, 12 -13 June 2007

Religion and nation• Congruence of nation and religion in the narratives of

Polish and Ukrainian identity• Post-peasant society - based on a non-urban social

structure and imagined rurality (family, religion, nation); result of underdevelopment and trasition ruptures

• Ethnic cleansings based on religious belonging during WW II and after

• the interpretation of an alternative, legitimate past safeguarded by the Catholic Church in socialist Poland

• Peasant parties, rural solidarity, strong institutions of the Catholic Church since Habsburg times

• 1966-1993: 430 new churches and chapels built; 1 priest for 763 believers; West and Central Poland 1 priest for 1211 believers; city of Przemysl - 1 priest for 140 peope!

• Przemysl – cradle of Ukrainian awakening; important for Poles (and Jews until WW II).

South-East Poland after 1989• The end of socialism made religion prominent in the

public sphere• The lowest decreasing of religious practicing after 1989• Lower level of higher education• Almost 60% inhabitants in rural areas (PL 38,4%)• Low productivity agriculture and small landholding since

Habsburg times; 35 % working in agriculture in 2002 (PL 20-25%)

• Unemployment up to 25 % (2004)• Negative net migration• Expected revenue from EU funds: 1,6 billions Euro until

2010• European periphery: development of tourism and

subsidized agriculture

Religion and national animosity• religion nurtures the mutual exclusivity between

Roman Catholic Poles and Greek Catholic Ukrainians in Przemyśl

• military and national symbolism supervised by religion – one nation’sheroes, another nation’s enemies

• ‘national ideology under socialism’ (Verdery 1991) • reshaping of symbolism resulted from people’s

insecurity during the transition• Ethnic hatred reproduced through families and the

state, but it is religion that supervises a nation’s memories in public sphere

Religion and tolerance• The key to understanding the tolerance in south-

east Poland lies in ‘post-peasantism’ • the most important and consistent institutional

guardian of which is the Catholic Church • the interpretation of an alternative, legitimate

past has been safeguarded by the Catholic Church in socialist Poland

• after 1989 the church heavily influenced the new moral order and the ways in which the past was interpreted

• ‘There is no reconciliation outside of the church in south-east Poland!’

Civil religion• essential for studies of practices and ideas of

tolerance is to include religion • whereas the liberal-secular definitions of civil

society emphasize individuals and the diversity of associations, the emphasis in approaches to civil religion placed on collective solidarity (Hann 2006; Bellah 1967)

• Catholic religion as a modernisation project since the end of 19th century – more than nation

• Education and social emancipation of people under religious influence

• de-privatization thesis (Casanova 1994) - analyzing the roles religion might play in the public sphere in modern societies

Europe as a religious project?

‘The Church warns against reducing the vision of a common Europe exclusively to economic and political aspects ... If we want to make a new unity of Europe durable we must build it on the spiritual values that once established it … it should be a Great European Union of Spirit.’

Pope John Paul II in Polish Sejm, 11 of June 1999