Religious Minority as a Source of National and State Identity: The Case of Slovakia

Abstract

In Central Europe, the role of religion in the creation of modern states has had many guises. In some predominantly Catholic countries, religious minorities have been an important source for national movements that sought emancipation from dominant political rule, which was often connected with the dominant (Catholic) religion. The article is focused on the case of Slovakia, where Lutherans, in spite of making up only a small proportion of the Slovak population, have been one of the two fundamental sources of the national movement for the last two centuries. It shows how the contemporary character of the state, society, and national identity and its relation to religion is influenced by the bi-confessionalism (dualism) of the Slovak national movement that was initiated by Slovak Lutherans in the eighteenth century. Although the Lutheran religious minority has been disappearing since 1990, the article shows how its heritage is still present in the character of contemporary institutions of national tradition and identity.

Contemporary Challenges to the Regulation of Religions in Europe

“…As can be seen, in the Czech Republic the models of relations have changed from a cooperative model, through restitution, to a secessionist model, i.e., a relatively religiously neutral state, with a system of privileged traditional churches. In Slovakia, the processes of restitution have moved towards the establishment of a hegemonic asymmetrical Catholic-Evangelical dualism as a principle of dominance between hierarchically arranged recognized religious actors and its dominance in the symbolic character of the state(Tížik, 2021). Both models, however, retain to varying degrees the strong hegemonic position of the Catholic Church, thus abandoning one of the key pillars of the identity of Czechoslovak statehood -the declared and in various forms more or less cultivated religious neutrality.…”