Religion and nation

1. Nationalism and religion in south-east PolandJuraj 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

2. 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 Churchin 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).

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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!’

6. 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

7. 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