Centrality of religiosity versus civic involvement. The case of Poland

Abstract

The article is an expression of search for the motivational role of religiosity in individuals’ civic activity. Mature civic attitude is shaped by the person’s values, individual and communal needs, and experience. The main thesis of the presented study is that the relation between religiosity and human will in many points overlap with the factors which determine the citizen’s activity for the benefit of the community. Stefan Huber’s Centrality of Religiosity Scale emphasizing the primary importance of the motivational value of religiosity and an original scale measuring civic involvement were used in the study (N = 732). The study proved that religiosity mostly serves as a civic involvement predictor among women from the middle age group. Although a higher level of civic involvement was found in men, religiosity did not prove to be a significant factor explaining its higher level, which means that the determinants for it need to be sought in other spheres.

Learning Worship as a Way to Improve Students’ Discipline, Motivation, and Achievement at School

“…School tasks would be simple to complete if students will maintain their religious practices. Persistence also creates personal characteristics; as a result, faith aids in the preparation of an individual for the more difficult times of life (Logan, 2013;Moradi, 2020;Turska-Kawa, 2018).…”

Impact of multi-dimensional religiosity on party support in Poland

“…In order to address our third aim stated in the article, we decided to construct a comparative model with the most significant and commonly used factors (Marcinkiewicz and Dassonneville, 2021; Turska-Kawa and Wojtasik, 2020; Xia, 2021), available in the WVS/EVS database such as: gender, age, education level (eight-point ISCED classification), left–right ideological identification and nationalistic beliefs.…”

“…Acknowledging thesis about existing socio-political cleavages leads us to assume that Central and Eastern European (Hernández and Kriesi, 2016; Kitschelt, 2001) democracy and party systems are shaped by some key leading forces such as authoritarianism fuelled by religiosity, traditionalism and nationalism, and by libertarianism fuelled by secular, cosmopolitan progressivism. As detailed studies show, without a doubt, religiosity (Cześnik et al, 2020; Grabowska, 2021; Kotnarowski and Markowski, 2014; Markowski and Stanley, 2016; Ramet and Borownik, 2017) proves to be a solid element of especially Polish political landscape and various collected data support cultural paradigm claiming that in Poland more religious people tend to support conservative right-wing and/or populist parties (Grabowska, 2021; Marcinkiewicz and Dassonneville, 2021; Markowski and Stanley, 2016; Turska-Kawa and Wojtasik, 2020; Xia, 2021). Although religiosity appears to be an important factor behind voting behaviour or party support in Poland, the existing studies offer very limited insight into how precisely religiosity impacts the voting decisions of Poles.…”

“…As an additional third aim, we wanted to construct a support attitude model that will somewhat replicate the most important factors used by other authors in the field (Grabowska, 2021;Marcinkiewicz and Dassonneville, 2021;Markowski and Stanley, 2016;Turska-Kawa and Wojtasik, 2020;Xia, 2021). In order to test if individual religious dimensions hold or change their predictive strength and impact, there was a need to use other factors commonly in use such as demographics and other dimensions of ideological identification.…”

The Process of Acquiring Political Relevance of Law and Justice Elections

“…(Glajcar et al, 2017, p. 434). In the classical division into left and right, PiS is easiest to classify as a center-right party that also implements social, free-market and conservative postulates (respect for the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church, tradition) (Turska-Kawa & Wojtasik, 2014). The strong position of the president in the very functioning of the party is reflected in the policy of shaping the state, where one of the decision-making centers after 2015 is a body not constitutionally empowered -the leader of the parliamentary majority, President of Prawo i Sprawiedliwość Jarosław Kaczyński.…”