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by Andrew Greeley |
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| Enough
research has been done on religion in Eastern Europe that one can say with considerable
confidence that religion is reviving in the former socialist countries. At a recent
conference at Nuffield College (Oxford) European scholars (Geoff Evans of Oxford and
Ariana Need of Amsterdam) and American scholars (Michael Hout and myself) were able to
compare notes and discover a convergence of findings. There are two major religious
changes in the former socialist countries, one obvious and astonishing, the other more
subtle but in the long run perhaps more important and, alas, more likely to be missed. There is, first of all, the dramatic revival of religion in Russia, now so obvious that no one can dispute it. Three out of five Russians say that they believe in God, a higher rate than in West Germany, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries. Two out of five say that they didn't used to believe in God but do now. 58% describe their religion is Orthodox, though only one out of ten were raised Orthodox. The majority of Russians want baptisms, weddings and funerals in church and agree that religion provides the moral basis for life and a support for family relationships. Almost half of them attend church services at least once a year and one out five pray at least once a week. |
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Thus nine years
after the abortive Communist coup that brought Boris Yeltsin to power, Orthodoxy has
reemerged as a major force in Russian life, so important indeed that, when Boris
Nicoalaevitch resigned as president, the Patricarch Alexei, in full robes, stood besides
him. Half a decade ago such a resurgence of Orthodoxy was dismissed, perhaps not
unreasonably, as impossible when I reported the first survey results, collected the same
year as Yeltsin's rise to power. Now the religious revival in Russia, perhaps the most
dramatic in human history, has become so obvious that it is taken for granted. Patently
the millennium-long Russian religious heritage was too strong to be destroyed by seventy
years of sometimes vicious but almost always inept Socialist oppression. Vladimir of Kiev
triumphed over Karl Mark. (Drs. Evans and Need reported that the proportions believing in
God and affiliating with Orthodoxy in the Ukraine and Beylorus were somewhat smaller but
not basically different from those in Russia). The second revival is more subtle but affects eight former Socialist countries on which we have data - in 1991 and 1998 Slovenia, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, and Russia and in 1998 the Czech Republic, Latvia, and Bulgaria. On a scale that combines (the highly inter-correlated variables) of belief in life after death, heaven, and "religious" miracles, the younger birth cohorts, especially those born during the nineteen seventies and the older cohorts, especially those born before nineteen thirty, have higher scores than the intervening cohorts. More concretely it would appear that the children share with (and sometimes exceed) the grandparental generation in the religious hope, which the parental generations seem to have rejected. This "U curve" exists, with somewhat varying shapes and at varying levels, in every country and is always statistically significant. Moreover no such curves can be found in any Western country. Only in Poland is there a negative correlation between educational attainment and spiritual hope - and that slight. At a time when religious leaders in the West bemoan the lost of religious faith among the young, the former socialist countries witness a dramatic rise of religious faith. How can this be explained? Perhaps the young in the former socialist countries have a different story about God than do their parents. An item asked in two surveys inquired whether the respondent thought that God was concerned with humans as persons. When answers to this question were added to the analysis, every single one of the eight U curves flattened out. The resurgence among the young of religious hope was linked to a rediscovery of a God who cares. When the burden of Socialist oppression was lifted, those born after 1970 found themselves more likely than their immediate predecessors, to believe in a God who is concerned about them personally - even in Poland! Far from being a phenomenon of "New Age" religion, it would appear to be a rebirth of age-old religion. Of its very nature this revival is invisible because it affects personal faith and hope. Church attendance normally correlates with advancing years. The nineteen seventies cohort is not yet old enough to return to church-going. It may never become more religiously active. In all eight countries confidence in Church leaders has fallen sharply in the last decade. Hannah Borowek and Gregoriez Gabinksi have edited a collection of essays which analyze the response of Eastern European churches to their new freedom. In every country, they report, the principle concerns of the churches were to reassert their political power, their religious monopoly, and their moral control of the population. Small wonder that they lost the confidence of their people. One would think that the religious leadership in Eastern Europe would have to be brain dead not to notice the possibilities for evangelization among those under thirty years old. However, since one hears nothing about this revival of faith in a God who cares, one suspects that they are not aware of it. Like religious leaders in the West, they do not need sociology to tell them about the needs and the problems of their people. Nor the opportunities. Drs. Need and Evans tell us that religion is stronger in Catholic countries than in Orthodox countries, though they offer no explanation for this finding. In our data, only Latvia provides a sufficient number of respondents to compare Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran respondents. In fact the U curve for Catholics is higher. European sociologists, I learned at the Nuffield meeting, are willing to admit that Catholics are more resilient to the pressures of "secularization" as they call it but they don't essay explanations. My hunch is that "secularization" may in fact represent the final waning of the elan of the Reformation. Catholics are more persistent in their heritage because they have different stories about God and world and the relationship between the two - David Tracy's analogical imagination. However, in the Catholic countries in Eastern Europe, the rejection of the Church's sexual ethic is almost as complete as it is in the West. Since sex is the principle preoccupation of Catholic leadership, it is very likely that they will ignore the resurgence of faith among the young and continue to denounce the paganism of their young people. They will agree with Cardinal Ratzinger that there is a terrible loss of faith and remain unaware of the bright promise in the youthful discovery of a God who cares. Thus they will miss completely one of the great religious opportunities of the last hundred years and overlook what is perhaps the best current hope for the future of Catholicism in Europe.
(Father Greeley teaches sociology at the
University of Chicago and the University of Arizona.
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