Review article
Some Characteristics of the Religiosity of Secondary School Attendants
Štefica Bahtijarević
Abstract
The starting point in our research was that religiosity, as we have already emphasized, is an attitude existing in the continuity, namely, that it is not an isolated and determined whole, but something that manifests itself in the whole specter with manifold nuances and grades of intensity from one extreme of the specter (a believer) to the other an atheist). The justification of this standpoint we find in the complexity and multi-dimensional being of the religiosity as well as in the persistence of tradition (in which religious component is strongly present) in the examined region. This has led us to use, in measuring the extension of religiosity with the school-attendants of the Zagreb region, on the one hand, a respective scale (which reflects continuity), and on the other hand, a series of indicators (to comprehend multidimensionality).
We have used threefold indicators:
1. Personal declaration of the examined person about personal conviction, about the necessity of religion and about the view of life.
2. The acceptance of the dogmas and the respect for religious precepts and norms.
3. The attachment to the Church.
The examined secondary-school attendants have personally declared themselves as
— believers 38,8%
— non-committed 20,0°/«
— non-religious 23,7%
— atheists 17,5
Or, according to the other index: 17,0% convinced believers, 15,4% nonconformist believers, 32,9% non-religious, and 10,3 % against religion. The convictions of the school attendants are to a great extent flexible (rather emotional than rational), they are not obligatory and they do not determine their behavior.
The view of life is only partially defined and does not always suppose an identical conviction or attitude towards religion.
The extension of religiosity as regards the acceptance of religious dogmas and as regards the respect of religious precepts and norms presents a certain selectivity in practicing particular church precepts, which means an inconsistency and partiality of this practice, in other words, a lack of obligatory force in regard of personal conviction and a certain contradiction between declared attitude of believers and practical attitude towards religious precepts as a basis for personal activity. »Churchliness« is very impressive as regards the practice of baptism (almost 3/4 of the school attendants), but this circumstance is far from being decisive for the ascertainment of the extension of religiosity. Actually, from other indicators we can conclude that global attachment to the Church is explicit with at most 17% of school attendants (out of the total), and relatively a small number of them take part in the life of their religious community, especially as regards frequent and permanent activities.
This means that with the school attendants of the Zagreb region one can speak of secularization of religiosity even on the individual plan: the participation in religious rites is either decreasing. They are practiced without being imagined in religious sense (baptism, charity work, celebration of feast-days).
There are only 3% of consistent believers that is 35 (according to our definition, the consistent believers are those who declared themselves convinced believers, who professed their faith in life after death, who declared to have a religious view of life and to be certain about the existence of God.
The group of believers attached to the Church (they were 3,7%, respectively 44 school attendants) consisted of those who (permanently or frequently) had religious press, who were baptized, who actually attend classes of religion, who go to church often or once a week, who take part in all or some forms of church activities, who consider religion and the Church useful or absolutely necessary to a modern man. Of course, all school attendants attached to the Church are believers and come from families where parents are also attached to the Church, 82% of parents being perfectly, and 18,2% partially attached.
These findings, therefore, have shown that among the secondary school attendants of the Zagreb region there is only a small group of those having a perfectly consistent religious conviction and who are perfectly attached to the Church. With all others the religion is a private affair to this extent as to condition a personal selection of teachings and norms, where some of them are accepted and respected and other neglected, so that they form a specific sort of believers distant from the institutional religion and near to the indifferent.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
156606
URI
Publication date:
30.6.1971.
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