The Relationship Between Religious Nationalism, Institutional Pride, and Societal Development: A Survey of Postcommunist Europe

Abstract

Past research suggests that religious nationalism increases during periods of dramatic change and insecurity. This article uses survey data to examine religious nationalism in postcommunist Europe. The analysis of the data reveals an increase of religious nationalism over the last two decades in these countries. This analysis also reveals that there has been a contradictory decline of religiosity in these countries during the same period. These findings are discussed in relation to national development, institutional pride, global populism, and the literature on religiosity.

Religion and National Identity in Central and Eastern European Countries: Persisting and Evolving Links

“…85 Closer to the specific context investigated here, findings from survey-based research investigating the relationship between religion, national identity, institutional pride, and societal development in post-Communist europe have suggested that there appears to be a stable, moderate for most, relationship between religiosity and the importance to claim a dominant religion as part of a national identity, which goes unmolested across two decades and during an apparent decline in conventional religious activity. 86 Following the foregoing discussion, in this article we will investigate the normative dimension of national identity by testing whether the survey respondents in the countries under investigation here distinguish between the ethno-religious and civil conceptions of nationhood. Moreover, regarding the affective dimension of national identity, following the literature on multiple identities, 87 we consider the role of both national and european attachment.…”

Introduction: All quiet on the Eastern front? Recent dynamics in the governance of religion in post-communist Europe

“…Paradoxically, one may observe that low levels of religiousness among inhabitants of many post-communist European countries in the private sphere translate into high levels of religious nationalism in the public socio-political sphere that transpire in the observed paradigmatic changes in the regimes of governance of religious diversity (Baronavski and Evans, 2018;Barry, 2020;International Social Survey Programme, 2013). This calls also for the investigation of to what extent the current rise in religious nationalism in some countries of post-communist Europe is caused or influenced by the securitizing discourse around immigration in general and the prospective Islamization of Europe in particular (Račius, 2020).…”