Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics

Volume 13 Issue 2  DOI 10.2478/jnmlp-2019-0010

Contemporary Religiosity and the Absence

of Solidarity With Those in Need
Ivana Noble
Charles University
Abstract
The article uses an adapted version of the multidimensional theory of religion
to explore changes in contemporary religiosity in Central Europe, with a
special focus on the Czech Republic. It asks whether there are any possible
connections between the current absence of welcome of refugees, and the fact
that the dominant religiosity that replaced the secularist ideology despises
religious dogmas and institutions. It asks how people believing in “something”,
who do not wish to define that “something” or share its vision with others,
can make an informed and healthy judgment and make themselves capable of
solidarity with others. The final part of the article returns to the possibilities
of strengthening precisely those dimensions of religion that have been
downplayed, yet without unrealistic expectations that people would move
back to the form of religiosity their parents, but more often already their
great-grandparents, left behind.

Keywords
religion and religiosity in Visegrad countries; secularization; post-secularization;
spirituality; social solidarity; refugees; multidimensinal theory of religion; Nin-
ian Smart

In this article, I will concentrate on the question of whether shifts in

mainstream religiosity in society go hand in hand with growing problems when
it comes to agreeing on human values and on joint action in times of need.
As an example, I will consider responses to the recent refugee situation. In the
first part, I will present some data on this situation, with particular attention
on the Visegrad countries. In two of these four countries, namely Poland and
Slovakia, there is still strong attachment to traditional religion, whereas in
the other two countries, the Czech Republic and Hungary, secularization
came early and atheism or agnosticism has been the dominant conviction for
several generations. I will ask what role in the changes is still played by the
Communist past, and why in Western European countries a similar decline
of traditional religions and rise of new forms of religiosity tend to dominate.

* Ivana Noble, Ecumenical Institute, Protestant Theological Faculty, Charles University, Černá 9 (PO
BOX 529), 115 55 Prague, Czech Republic; [email protected]. This work has been supported by
Charles University Research Centre program No. 204052.

© 2019 Ivana Noble, published by Sciendo.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.

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Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(2)

Then, I show how a dimensional theory of religion could help in examining

the current religious scene. Here, I refer to empirical research mapping the
shifts in the religious terrain in Europe, and use multidisciplinary tools for
interpreting the current picture. I use the Czech Republic as an example,
since both Western and Eastern European paradigms of the coexistence of
secularization, post-secularization and re-composition of religion can be
found there. My particular question remains as to how the rising emphasis on
spirituality is compatible with the inability to offer a common and effective
response to the situations of crisis in society. I also ask what can be done about
the underplayed dimensions of religion, ones that could aid us in taking the
changes seriously without romanticizing the religion of the past and dreaming
of its return.
Before going to the argument itself, let me briefly clarify the terms that I
am using. I refer to religiosity when dealing with particular beliefs and
practices that do not necessarily form one coherent whole, consisting of sacred
narratives, rituals, religious experiences, doctrines, institutions, cultures and
their monuments, etc., as, in various degrees, classical religions do. As will be
pointed out, when speaking about current religiosity, we find fragments of
different religions. Thus, religiosity and religion are not completely separated.
Spirituality is seen as that dimension of both religion and religiosity, which
deals with the inner life of people or of communities, seeking for and
cultivating the relationship with what is seen as the ultimate.

Responses to the Refugee Situation

In the past few years, we have faced the heaviest movement of refugees
and migrants since World War II. We all know the statistics. According to
UNHCR, there are currently 65.6 million forcibly displaced people, 22.5
million of whom are refugees. Over half of them are under the age of 18 years.
Eight million of them come from Syria and Afghanistan. The vast majority
of refugees, according to the statistics – 86% – live in developing regions1;
hence, Europe is faced only with a small percentage of those in urgent need.
And yet it has shown itself unable to find a common approach to help that
would come out of the values on which the European Union is based. Instead,
although in a different intensity, various fears of others, of their national,
cultural, and religious identity, are used in the public discourse as “reasons”
to keep the refugees out. The governments of the Visegrad countries feature

1 See http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html (accessed 2/6/2018); https://www.amnesty.org/

en/what-we-do/refugees-asylum-seekers-and-migrants/ (accessed 2/6/2018).
2

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 Ivana Noble
Contemporary Religiosity and the Absence of Solidarity With Those in Need
among the least hospitable.2 While at first glance, the religious affiliation of
the population of the four countries differs dramatically, ranging from those
characterized as predominantly religious (Poland and Slovakia) to those
understood as secular (the Czech Republic and Hungary),3 the political rhetoric
“justifying” the fears frequently includes a claim to be upholding Christian
values.4 The societies in these countries are divided. In the Czech Republic,
there have also been the strongest civic protests against governmental policies
since the fall of Communism, as well as subcultures promoting solidarity.5
Yet, the question remains as to why populist policies and politicians continue
winning elections, and why their ideology including such a strong NO to
helping people in need is successful. Are this current absence of solidarity
and its religious justification linked to the separation of a predominantly
individualized spirituality from other dimensions of religion? What role is
played by the post-truth approach to religious values and claims?

The Multidimensional Theory of Religion

First, let us consider what, according to multidimensional theories of religion,
complements the institutional, the doctrinal, the moral, and the spiritual
aspects, which were mentioned so far. Multidimensional theories of religion
go back to the mid-twentieth century. They offered a way of explaining how
the essence of religion, something which cannot be fully conceptualized, is
imprinted in human life. Thus, they spoke about the theoretical/doctrinal,
the practical/cultic, and the sociological dimensions, the latter involving a
system of social relations within religious groups, and also their relations to
a broader society (Wach 1944).6 The dimensional theory helped sociologists,
psychologists, and philosophers of religion, as well as theologians, to see more

2 In December 2017, the European Commission decided to take action against Poland, the Czech
Republic, and Hungary, for refusing to participate in the refugee relocation scheme, and referred these
three countries to the European Court of Justice. See https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-
and-central-asia/poland/report-poland/ (accessed 2/6/2018).
3 See, for example, “Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe,” Pew
Research Centre, 10 May 2017, http://www.pewforum.org/2017/05/10/religious-affiliation/ (accessed
4/6/2018).
4 For the abuse of Christian values rhetoric, see, for example, www.vlasteneckenoviny.cz/?p=196214
(accessed 2/6/2018).
5 Apart from the NGOs (such as People in Need, Amnesty International, Diakonie, Charita, Adra)
who have been long-term helping both inside the country and abroad, new initiatives were established,
such as Hate Free Zones, or simple events such as open breakfasts in mosques or churches. Perhaps the
most significant new initiative has been the movement Students for Solidarity (https://studentizasoli-
daritu.ff.cuni.cz/en/who-are-we).
6 Wach’s approach, although often considered as outdated – unjustly as Christian K. Wedemeyer
points out – gave rise to further studies considering the typology and the multidimensionality of
religion and religiosity (Wedemeyer 2010, xvii–xix).
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Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(2)

clearly the contours of the different aspects of the impact of religion on human
life, their interaction in forming a religious identity, and what needs to be
taken into account in their hermeneutics of religion or in their exploration
of what constitute loci theologici – places out of which theology is done. The
Scottish educationalist and Religious Studies’ scholar Ninian Smart further
specified that such investigations need to take on board doctrine but also the
sacred narratives that ground and relativize it, ethics and rituals, institutions
as well as religious experiences, and also on how the religious experience
is expressed in the material objects people create, and in the political and
economic relationships they cultivate (Smart 1969, 15-25, and Smart 1987,
296-8).7
This nuanced approach did not claim that, in all classical religions in each
period of history, one could find a balanced interaction of all the dimensions.
Rather, it stressed that all the dimensions are important, all need to be
considered, and if any was missing or downplayed, one should observe what
happened to others. Smart’s special interest as an educationalist lay in the
link between spirituality and human values, and in how to strengthen this
link when weak (Smart 1968, 105-6 and Rennie 1999). His insights are
thus very useful both for understanding the state of traditional religions in
countries like Poland and Slovakia, or in Western European countries where
we still find a strong attachment to traditional religion, and for investigating
the current religiosity which lies outside the classical religions, without being
completely separated from them. Smart’s sensitivity to the realm where people
are neither sure about the existence of God nor of their atheism or agnosticism
is valuable as we concentrate on the results of the European Values Study and
their interpretations.

What Comes after Secularization – The Czech Case Study

Secularization was understood in European modernity as a process of
emancipation from religion, in which religious thinking, practices, and
institutions lost social significance. The turn of the twentieth and twenty-
first centuries brought new developments within this paradigm (see Martin
2005, Davie 1999). Thus, we now speak about different modes of the return
of religion and spirituality into the public space and about its coexistence with
what of the secularization paradigm is still alive.

7 Smart 1996 added two more dimensions, the material one, by which he meant objects or places sym-
bolising or manifesting the sacred, and the political/economic dimension. In his different writings,
both the names and the numbers of dimensions varied, but the basic intuition remained: the dimen-
sional analysis helped to relate together religious experience and religious expression.
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 Ivana Noble
Contemporary Religiosity and the Absence of Solidarity With Those in Need
I have chosen to look in more detail at the Czech Republic. It is different to
a generally observable picture in other Central European countries such as
Poland, Slovakia, or even Hungary as well as in parts of Eastern Europe. In
these settings, religion returns to the public sphere along with nationalism.
The dominant church offers itself as a “mother of the nation and a support
of the throne,”8 but while the majority within these societies see this as
acceptable, it neither does inspire any religious revival nor does it draw on
other dimensions of Christianity. Hence, relationship to the religious and
ethnic minorities, to refugees and migrants, is not cultivated, for example,
by Jesus’s attitudes in the gospels or by the liturgical prayer for all or by the
church’s social teaching. The new identity discourse does not correspond to
the content of Christianity, and it asks only for conformity to this ideological
frame (Hamplová and Nešpor 2009). The Czech Republic fits neither of these
models, though features of both are present. Indeed, we could even say there
is a conflict between the two.
Unlike in other Visegrad countries, in the Czech Republic, the majority
of the population is not interested in an ecclesial mediation of national
identity. Churches are the least trusted institutions, especially when it comes
to expressing political agenda.9 In most cases, they do not offer a religious-
ideological underpinning of nationalist and xenophobic rhetoric.10 The
churches generally do not play the role of mediator of religious meaning on
behalf of those who do not take an active part in their life, except where there
are personal relationships of trust established at a local level, or where people
do not suspect the proximity of the church and political power. The interest
in spirituality without religious belonging and without a profiled doctrinal
content flourishes. But, it is increasingly difficult to find in such spirituality
not only ties to institutions and doctrines but also any sound criteria for
discernment between what is faith and what is superstition, what leads to
human wholeness and what to transcendentalized self-centeredness.

8 I take this phrase from a lecture given by Pavel Hošek, “Náboženská situace české společnosti ve
světle sociologických výzkumů jako východisko teologické reflexe,” [“The Religious Situation of
Czech Society in the light of Sociological Research as a Starting Point for Theological Reflection”].
The lecture was delivered at a meeting of the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University at
Želiv, 8 June 2018. I also take the Eastern model characteristics from him.
9 David Václavík, Dana Hamplová, and Zdeněk Nešpor point out that while after the fall of Com-
munism the trust in religious institutions reached up to 50%, by the mid-1990s it had fallen by about
a half, and now the level of trust oscillates between 25% and 30% (Václavík, Hamplová and Nešpor
2017).
10 One of the significant exceptions to this rule is the current Roman Catholic Archbishop of Prague,
Cardinal Dominik Duka, who has a very close relationship to the president. But the strongest criti-
cism of his position comes from within the Roman Catholic Church.
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Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(2)

Czech society is often mistakenly perceived as one of the most atheist and
irreligious in Europe. According to the last census, only about 14% of the
population responded that they belonged to any religious organization.11 A
further 7% considered themselves believers but without any institutional
affiliation. 34% claimed to be without confession and 45% left the question
unanswered.12 The low institutional self-identification is often mistaken for a
high presence of atheism or for a lack of interest in religion. But the picture
changes when we take on board other empirical research, in particular the
results of large-scale international quantitative surveys such as the International
Social Survey Programme (ISSP: 1991, 1998, 2008, 2018); European Values
Study (EVS – 1981 (the Communist bloc did not participate); 1991, 1999,
2008, 2017), or the so far only independent Czech sociological survey
exploring religion (Rabušic and Kafková 2010, 7; Rabušic and Hamanová
2009; Lužný, Nešpor et al. 2008; Hamplová 2008).13
The results which are available up till now show that it is much harder to
find a convinced atheist (sometimes, in sociological terms called an analytical
atheist – that is someone who consciously rejects any kind of transcendent,
supernatural person or power, and has relatively clearly formulated reasons
for such rejection) than people who have some form of religious faith. The
percentage of convinced atheists is between 15% and 20%, whereas those
who identified themselves with some form of belief in God goes up to 50%
(Vido, Václavík, and Paleček 2006; Nešpor 2012). When the content of that
belief is further explored, we see that only about 10% identify themselves
with a traditional Christian understanding of a personal God, whereas up to
40% preferred to speak about some supernatural power, life force, or spirit
(Václavík, Hamplová and Nešpor 2017, 13 n12). If we take away 15–20% of
atheists, it leaves us still with 30–35% of people who either do not want to
respond or do not know what to believe and what to think.
While we always need to take the results of empirical research with some
reserve when it comes to details, the broad picture repeats itself. The majority

11 These were usually Christian churches, as the presence of other world religions in Czech Republic
is very low: according to census adherence, Muslims and Jews would both be less than 0.04% of the
population, though we need to take on board that not all of them would be registered. According
to other studies, there are some 22,000 Muslims living in the Czech Republic (Šlechta et al., 2009).
According to the Federation of Jewish communities, there are 15–20,000 Jews currently living in the
Czech Republic (https://www.fzo.cz/o-nas/statistika). These figures both equate to some 0.2% of the
population.
12 See https://www.czso.cz/csu/czso/nabozenska-vira-obyvatel-podle-vysledku-scitani-lidu-2011-61wegp46fl.
13 Regarding the scale: ISSP 2008 – 1512 respondents; EVS 2008 – 1821 respondents DIN 2006 –
1200 respondents. The data are available at ISSP Research Group (2012): International Social Survey
Programme: Religion III - ISSP 2008. GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA4950 Data file Version 2.2.0,
doi:10.4232/1.11334
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 Ivana Noble
Contemporary Religiosity and the Absence of Solidarity With Those in Need
of Czechs adhere to a kind of syncretistic and decentralized religiosity or
spirituality, in which not only the institutional and doctrinal dimensions
are, if not absent, significantly downplayed, but also sacred narratives, ritual,
and ethics largely do not shape people’s beliefs, values, and convictions.14
The new religiosity/spirituality is consumer-oriented and goes hand in hand
with widespread illiteracy with regard to these dimensions of religion, leaving
religious experience and material objects that people create in isolation, without
giving them criteria for discernment that would emerge from interaction with
other dimensions of religion. In addition, there is a strong NO to the political
and economic relations that classical religion, in our case Christianity, forms
or even could form. Such a situation makes the practitioners of decentralized
and individualized spirituality vulnerable to the ideology of relativism utilized
by populist politics.
But there are generational differences. The oldest generation (born before
World War II) has the highest percentage of religious identification – but
also it is among this generation that we very often find xenophobic attitudes.
Hence, this generation would be the closest to the East European model. The
middle generation is uprooted – in Grace Davie’s phrase “believing without
belonging” (Davie 2000 and 2002) – and contains the highest percentage of
the vague religiosity/spirituality. Apart from the more esoteric forms of search,
there is, however, also a serious interest in learning how to pray and how
to meditate (this generation is predominantly present at spiritual retreats).
It is mainly in this generation that now shapes our public life that religion
returned to the public sphere, but it is the whole mixture of religion, ranging
from the model of identity-building to the representative role of religion in
the public sphere and a personal search for spirituality in the private sphere.
The youngest generation – those who did not grow up under Communism –
often reject the vague religiosity of their parents. There is a higher percentage
of people taking an active part in institutional religion but also a higher
percentage of convinced atheists. When looking at the different initiatives
of solidarity, young people, in particular students, represent the most active
and able segment of the society, and they would be most often present at the
demonstrations against populist policies (Laudátová and Vido 2010; Collins-
Mayo and Dandelion 2010; Polak and Rosta 2016; Arts and Halman 2013;
Pollack, Müller, and Pickel 2012).

14 According to the research, less than 30% of respondents identify with any form of belief in heaven,
hell, or resurrection, while more than 40% believe in the power of amulets, in the usefulness of horo-
scopes, and still more than 50% in fortune telling (Václavík, Hamplová and Nešpor 2017, 14).
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Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(2)

The Czech case study offers an interesting picture. First, secularization that
continues to influence public life coexists with the large-scale turn to a vague
religiosity. This religiosity is not organized in any institutions, it does not have
common core values and it lacks any structures that would enable a common
action. Thus, it is reduced to the field of spirituality and culture while the
realms of the practical, political, or economic life are, on the whole, left free
of religious influence. Those who lived some of their adult life under the
Communist regime are used to inconsistencies between the private and public
spheres of life. In this sense, the continuous secularization of the public sphere
and the post-secular turn of the private sphere easily coexist. Likewise, the
division between who belongs to the life in the private sphere, and who does
not, influences the attitude toward migrants and refugees in this generation.
There are, however, generational differences.
Moreover, we need to take on board also the fact that the differentiation
between what is considered to be public and what is considered to be private
spheres of life have been disturbed. In the current liquid societies, not only
are the traditional structures of life dissolved but also the very judgment that
used to assist in discerning between the inner and the outer spheres (Bauman
2007; Han 2010; Han 2014). Hence, the non- or anti-institutional religiosity/
spirituality can, in some instances, absorb the populist link of religion,
nationalism, and politics, and in other instances protests against it. It can
adapt to the situation in the Western European countries where secularization
is on the rise, as well as to Poland and Slovakia, where the pre-secular, the
secular, and the post-secular convictions and practices form one whole. The
Communist heritage, indeed, assists in the dissolution of structures of lives
and of judgment (Havel 1985), but with regard to religiosity and its role in the
societies, it is no longer the dominant influence.

Re-Composition of Religion and Dissolving of the Criteria of Judgment

The increasingly difficult agreement on common values in Europe is only
partly due to the re-composition of religion and the “diffused spirituality,”
as Yves Lambert calls the amalgam of new religious movements, para-
scientific beliefs, and self-oriented spirituality (Lambert 2003). This plurality
is an empirically demonstrated fact. However, the fact lives in interpretation,
and in a public discourse the interpretation of the plurality is not free from
fundamentalist overtones. Here, I mean a different sort of fundamentalism
than religious fundamentalism; rather, its mirror image attacking any
attempt at discernment between holy and unholy, good and bad, just and
unjust, and marking them as remnants of a Christian imperialism or as

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 Ivana Noble
Contemporary Religiosity and the Absence of Solidarity With Those in Need
fundamentalism. This happens even when such attempts go hand in hand
with critique of the relation between religion and power and the critique of
religious fundamentalism. Such attitudes draw on the post-modern critique
of essentialism and direct such critique not only toward discernment but also
toward the profiled notions of European heritage grounding such discernment
(usually expressed as Hellenic and Christian, in some instances as Greek
philosophy, Roman law, and Judeo-Christian religion, sometimes admitting
that Islam also impacted on the European heritage).15 Patrick Fridlund,
drawing on Derrida, says that the dominant Western discourse is criticized
for its “hierarchical axiology.” In it
values are ranked in dichotomized pairs like normal/abnormal, full/
empty, proper/parasitic, serious/non-serious, literal/non/literal, centre/
periphery, and essence/addition. There is a desire to find the original
pure, proper, normal and essential, and only then – afterwards – to see
deviations and the complications in what is held to be impure, parasitic
and abnormal... (Fridlund 2011, 117).
The populist turn in European societies benefits from the dissolution of
criteria of judgment. Coming back to the problem of Christian values
being identified with xenophobia, nationalism, and exclusivism, when the
difference between the proper and the parasitic is ruled out as an outdated
essentialism, all interpretations are equally possible, and the public space
is left for the least scrupulous and the loudest voice to win. The classical
authors of the post-modern critique, such as Derrida or Lyotard, however,
fought for something else than a post-truth and post-justice society. And their
analysis also can be usefully turned against the extreme relativist positions,
as such positions form nothing else than a mirror image of fundamentalism,
or we could say a fundamentalism of a relativist provenance. It brings the
end of communication, and of a common meaningful action. It does so by
the upholding of an absolutist belief that none of the beliefs or convictions
has more truth value than any other. The radical sameness – an opposite to
the ranking and dichotomizing – assumes with an unquestionable certainty
that all values and practices are equally good or bad, all practices are equally
just or unjust, all statements have the same share in the truth and in the lie.
Thus, a relativist fundamentalism is a perfect epistemological underpinning

15 The reductionist notion of European inherited identity is often associated with the notion of Eu-
ropean soul. Ambrose In-Ren Mong OP comments on the identification of this soul as Christian,
saying “Most people would acknowledge the Christian heritage of European culture, but the idea of
promoting the ‘myth of a Christian Europe’ in order to exclude other religious and secular traditions
is something else” (Mong 2014, 8). Werner Jeanrond argues against the notion, saying that it is more
helpful to speak about a space than about a soul, and in particular, a space open for coexistence and
cooperation of people of different religious traditions and secular beliefs (Jeanrond 2006, 185-6).
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Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(2)

for the post-truth and post-justice society, a perfect ground for that type of
self-centered spirituality which petrifies one’s self-interests as the ultimate.
The post-modern critique can help in deconstructing such fundamentalism
as well, to unmask it as an illusion, and to revive creativity, playfulness, and
freedom necessary for re-establishing communication that would avoid both
the dualist and the monist tyranny (Dolejšová (Noble) 2001, 33-43; Noble
2002; Noble 2005; Noble and Noble 2016).

Pluralist Alternatives to Ideology of Relativism

Regarding the analysis of the modern critique of religion and the dynamics
between secularization and religion, we also find approaches, which work
with religious plurality positively but in a non-relativist manner, such as those
of Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor. In analyzing the unfinished project
of modernity, Habermas places the religious and the non-religious elements
within secularization as such. Their dialectics grounds the possibilities of a
communicative action, such as a reflected and responsible help to refugees.
Respect for difference and cooperation in commonly inhabited states, societies,
and cultures must be, according to Habermas, open to a complementary
learning process if we are to balance shared citizenship and cultural difference.
The public sphere, then, is cultivated when human freedom and common
action are joined together (Habermas 1981; Habermas 2001).
According to Charles Taylor, secular concepts meet their limit as they are
ultimately incapable of providing a self-less center of the self, and of anchoring
core values such as the value of the life of all, justice and good will, equal
freedom and moral responsibility, the value of prevention of unnecessary
death and suffering. Taylor rejects the “clash of civilizations” model of social
interaction. Like Habermas, he seeks for a kind of communicative action that
would join the multicultural, religiously, and morally plural world together.
Recognizing the plurality not only outside but also within each religious
tradition, with his special focus on Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought,
Taylor offers a nuanced answer to the question regarding the place religion
takes both in forming an often aggressive reaction against secularization
and a creative deconstruction of both secularist and religiously fanatical self-
centeredness (Taylor 1989; Taylor 2007).
We can also utilize other important sources in the secularization/post-
secularization debate, such as the work of Jean Marie Domenach dealing
with the possibilities of “ecological politics” while balancing religion with
the need for autonomy and social conviviality (Domenach 1990; Domenach
1992; Domenach 1994; Domenach 1995). We can also draw on analyses of
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 Ivana Noble
Contemporary Religiosity and the Absence of Solidarity With Those in Need
various other dimensions of the return of religion to the public sphere, or of
the arguments that in one form or another religion has never left the public
sphere (Berger 1999; Norris and Inglehart 2004; Juergensmeyer, Griego and
Soboslai 2015). The multidimensional understanding of classical religions
and of re-composed religiosity is vital, if we are not going to give up on
criteria for judging between what is superstition and what is faith, what is
selfish and what is generous, what is and what is not our responsibility in
times of humanitarian crisis, etc. When appeals to classical religions, such
as Christianity, or to Christian values become contentless, used to defend
xenophobia and nationalism (Ramos, Pereira and Vala 2016; Roux 2014; Peral
and Ramos 2013), it is easy to keep this absence of content in operation when
negative sentiments against religious doctrines and institutions are exploited.
Including other dimensions of religion, such as sacred narratives, ethics, and
rituals may be helpful, not to convince others to return to the religious forms
of the past, but rather to know that Jewish law demanded the protection of
and hospitality toward orphans, widows, and strangers, that Jesus experienced
the life of a refugee and his teaching called people toward responsibility for
those who suffered. Or people need to know that in Christian liturgies we find
prayers for those who are gathered in the churches but also for all people and
for all the world. Historically, when religious experiences have been separated
from such values, in the long term, they have not brought people well-being.
Today, art and a good culture (those forms of culture which still cultivate)
have wider possibilities to communicate such values than doctrine or religious
institutions. But there are also examples of doctrines and institutions guarding
freedom, love, and human creativity. The popularity of Pope Francis shows
that such dimensions of religion can still bring something good beyond the
churched population. Good theology still helps to interpret the symbolic
wealth of tradition, it still offers keys for understanding freedom and
conviviality in their horizontal and vertical expressions together. Working
with many dimensions of religion is not a strategy for avoiding religious
plurality, but rather for understanding religious plurality and appreciating
what is good in it, provided we are still able to discern, even if the criteria we
use are not infallible, and not even generally accepted across all the religious-
secular spectrum.
Taking on board the results of the empirical research, we can claim that
precisely spirituality and culture are able to assist most efficiently in dismantling
the bond between the non-critical post-modern notion of interiority and the
self-centered justifications of the absence of solidarity with others in need.
Yet, as has been pointed out, it needs to be those forms of spirituality and

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Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics 13(2)

culture in which criteria for discernment have been critically appropriated

but not dissolved. Communication and search for a common ground is then
crucial. With regard to religion and religiosity, such communication needs to
involve people who identify themselves with some form of belief in God, some
supernatural power, life force or spirit, as well as those who consider themselves
agnostics or atheists. A common reflection on shared experiences can help not
necessarily in building up new meta-criteria, but rather in giving weight and
importance to the successful examples of discernment that emerge, uncovering
the difference between when human life (personal and communal) flourishes,
and when it does not; why it flourishes, and why it does not. Remembering
the instances when such difference was recognizable makes people participate
in a common tradition and makes it possible to celebrate the revelations of
freedom, love, and conviviality with a genuine gratitude, and the gratitude.
And gratitude may re-open the door to generosity.

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