Since the fall of communism, the religious situation in Eastern and Central Europe and in Russia has become ever more complex and diversified. To shed some light on the changing patterns of religious belief and practice in these regions, RW recently spoke with Detlef Pollack, a well-known German sociologist who has conducted a good deal of research on religion in Eastern European. Pollack currently holds the Max Weber Chair at New York University and was interviewed by RW‘s editor in early July.
RW: How much do we know about religion in Eastern Europe and Russia through survey literature? Are the quantity and quality of surveys on religion in these regions coming closer to that of the U.S. and Europe?
Pollack: It’s catching up, without a doubt. The World Value Surveys and the European Value Surveys are being applied to more and more Eastern European countries. The same with the International Social Survey Program.
I have carried out my own survey in 2000, called Political Culture in Eastern Europe, which surveys 11 Eastern European countries and includes about 15 questions concerning religion. The Catholic Church has carried out its own survey, known as Awakening, which surveys 15 countries in the east and has been collected in five volumes in the last four or five years.
RW: Many observers report a religious revival in Russia and many parts of Eastern Europe. But you have written that the situation is far more complex and contradictory.
Pollack: We see a religious revival in Russia, an upsurge in Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, [but] in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and eastern Germany we see a decline in church attendance. In Romania and Poland, religious practice remains high with little decline. We also have to differentiate not only between the different countries but also between the different dimensions of religion.
Church attendance has not grown as much as belief in God. You also have to look at the different age groups and how syncretistic, non-traditional religions are accepted more among the young while traditional religions are accepted more among the elderly, as you might expect.
RW: You find that the number of believers has increased in Russia, yet the level of church involvement remains low. But in Eastern Orthodox societies, hasn’t there always been weak church attendance patterns, with many not regularly attending the weekly liturgy?
Pollack: This is one explanation. It may also be that the belief in God means something different and that it’s part of Russian identity. In the last three or four years, attendance has gone up.
In the first part of the 1990s, there was only an upswing in belief in God, while church attendance was stable. The percentage of church attendance has increased– from six to 10 percent. But the increase in belief in God is much higher– from 35 percent in 1990 to 61 percent in 1999.
RW: You see in parts of Eastern Europe a rise in individual religiosity and a disconnection from church involvement. Is this phenomenon similar to what has taken place in the West?
Pollack: It’s true that people today insist on being autonomous in accepting religious doctrine. In former times, religion was a given, but now individualism is going on inside and outside the church. But as a sociologist…it is not convincing that religion does not need institutional support.
RW: So you don’t think non-institutional spiritualities and movements, such as Eastern and new religious groups, will replace traditional religions for those influenced by such individualism?
Pollack: In more secular societies, such as eastern Germany and Estonia, people select and choose various teachings from both alternative religions and traditional churches, forming a syncretistic whole. In countries where religion is stronger, such as Poland and Lithuania, these non-Christian religious forms [have less effect] and create alternatives and a greater plurality of different religions.
RW: Today, atheism and secularism are strongest in the Czech Republic and eastern Germany. In the latter case, which you have studied the most, how did so many east Germans become disenchanted with the church, given its involvement in the protests against the government in the late 1980s?
Pollack: The church was siding with the people when the revolution took place. After the revolution many institutions in eastern Germany declined, except for the church. The [Protestant] church took on the image of a Western institution, which turned people off. Then people were also becoming more concerned with guaranteeing their material existence and fighting for jobs than with ideological and religious concerns.
People also had to pay church taxes and because of the extra burden, didn’t want to pay for religion. This is, however, changing now, More and more people are becoming interested in questions of the meaning of life. They are looking for answers and are interested in different psychotherapies, worldviews or even religions.
RW: Are there any signs of religious vitality in eastern Germany?
Pollack: In the southern part of eastern Germany, in Saxony and Thuringia, for instance, there are enclaves of stability in the folk church; many people still attend church services.
RW: One of the main findings of your research is that the more churches tie themselves to political influence and power, the more they tend to lose favor among the people.
Pollack: Yes, generalized and applied to Western Europe and even to the U.S., the higher degree of religiosity in the United States can be attributed to the sharp separation of church and state. The more politically involved a church is, the less socially attractive it is… In Poland, for instance, in the beginning of the early 1990s, the Catholic Church tried to influence the whole of society, including elections and legislation.
We can see that many of the Poles rejected these attempts to influence everyday life directly. The confidence in the church declined. But from the middle to the end of the 1990s, the confidence in the church increased again as the church became more restrained. Poles have remained strong believers, but they take a more differentiated attitude toward the church; they are skeptical of the church trying to [address] all of society.