Izvorni znanstveni članak

The Workers, Religion and Church

Srđan Vrcan ; Pravni fakultet, Split

Sažetak

The paper is devoted to a discussion of the problem of the working class commitment to religion and involvement in church under specific circumstances ot the present-day Yugoslav social situation, taking into account the findings and conclusions from many researches in different West-European countries and analyzing the empirical data obtained by the author in a survey research on religion and religiosity in one of the most important regions in Croatia. This discussion is divided in four sections.
The first section contains a detailed description of the extent of the commitment to religion and involvement in church of the workers in that region taking into consideration both the traditional and conventional commitment and involvement as well as the actual ones. The conclusion is that there is a significant decrease between the traditional and conventional commitment and involvement and the actual ones which is evident in terms of personal religious identification, different forms of religious behaviour and sharing some crucial religious beliefs. Such a decrease is interpreted as an indicator of the existence and persistence of a progressing process of disaffection of the important segments of the working class from religion and church. But it is pointed out that such a process is not peculiar only to the present-day Yugoslav situation. Moreover, such a process of disaffection from religion and church is not very spectacular it compared with the similar process in some of the West-European countries with Catholic background.
The second section if devoted to establish a hierarchy of different social classes and social strata in terms of the respective extents of their commitment to religion and involvement in church. The major conclusions are: a) the working-class is not the social class which is involved in the process of disaffection from religion and church in the strongest possible way and consequently it is not the social class which is actually the most disaffected; b) the hierarchy of social classes and strata in this region in terms of their actual commitment to religion and involvement in church differs in some important respects from the similar hierarchies in some of the West-European countries established in different empirical researches. There is in the third section an analysis of different social variables that seem to be positively or negatively correlated in different extent of the commitment to religion and involvement in church of different social classes and social strata. The conclusion is that the extent of the commitment to religion and involvement in church on the average of different social classes and different social strata seems to be positively correlated with:
a) proximity to the rural world;
b) proximity to the world of manual work;
c) low levels of formal school education;
d) low levels of political activity and participation in the activity of different political organisation and social decision-making bodies;
f) low levels of involvement in the everyday functioning of the institutional arrangements of the existing social system, and in particular in the institutional arrangements of strategic importance for the system.
The fourth section contains an attempt to identify in more general terms those social conditions that influence in a crucial way the persistence of the actual commitment to religion and involvement in church as well as the progressing process of desaffection form religion and church.

Ključne riječi

Hrčak ID:

156140

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/156140

Datum izdavanja:

31.12.1977.

Podaci na drugim jezicima: hrvatski

Posjeta: 729 *