The countries of Central Europe present a suitable arena for studying the interplay of religion and nationalism. This study explores religious expressions of national identity through the issue of postage stamps, from 2006 to 2010, in seven Central European countries. While the national societies in question exhibit very different religious inclinations, as expressed through a variety of recent, comparable data, quantitative and qualitative analyses of the stamps they issued over a 5-year period enrich our understanding of the religious elements and traditions that form an integral part of Central European identities. As expected, states with higher relative numbers of religious adherents-Poland, Slovakia, and Austria-produce relatively more religiously themed stamps, particularly stamps that depict "living religion." Protestant or Catholic traditions can also be traced in the relative frequencies of stamp issues. The stamps demonstrate how states employ religious traditions and heritage to perpetuate a sense of national community.
This study focuses on the local identities of children living in rural towns of Czechia, Poland and Slovakia. Cognitive maps, drawn by elementary school students in geographically proximate municipalities near international borders, provide a means of investigating the significance of local religious sites in the minds of young people. This research successfully examines everyday interactions between the subjects and their local landscape. It seeks to highlight religious elements of local identities. The methods employed in this research present a more humanistic and qualitative approach, shedding light on the daily experiences of children in rural settings. Recognizing the inclusion and even the placement and artistic details of a religious site in a child-drawn map is a powerful way to move research “beyond the ‘officially sacred’”. The methods also allow for a blending of both passive – including a religious site in a cognitive map – and active – ranking a religious site among the top three important places – declarations of a religious element within local, territorial identity. This study demonstrates how children use elements of the local religious landscape in constructing and re-constructing their community identity. The two Slovak municipalities showed the greatest affinity for religious elements among the expressions of local identity (children’s cognitive maps). Poland’s municipalities ranked in the middle and the two Czech municipalities scored lowest in terms of religious sites being considered important to the research participants.
What story can place names tell about the significance of religion to national and regional societies? This study explores Christian place names in Czechia, Poland and Slovakia, three neighboring countries of Central Europe. Historically, these three nations share predominantly Catholic religious roots. More recently, however, their respective national societies display markedly different attitudes toward religion. Using FamilySearch Places (an online database of place names), the study examines the occurrence and spatial distribution of Christian place names. It considers when these names were initially coined and looks at changes involving Christian place names, since 1900. The research uncovers a number of apparent spatial patterns in Christian toponyms. With few exceptions, the observed name changes were religious to secular in nature.
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