Kom: Časopis za Religijske Nauke (Jan 2019)
Attitude towards and confidence in church among citizens of Serbia
Abstract
The process of secularization made classical religiosity lose its traditionally dominant position. This position is taken over by forms of the so-called secular religiosity. In our view, secular religiosity is not recognized in Serbia as religiosity of the postmodern age, but rather as a form of adaptation of religion to the conditions of postmodernism. Therefore, we believe that classical religiosity is still dominant in Serbia. We just interpret attitude and trust in church as conventional religiosity. Attitudes towards and trust in church are examined through two questions. The first question measures the attitude towards church through a bivalent attitude of whether church gives answers to moral questions, spiritual needs, family and social issues. The second question is about trust in church. We measured both issues in relation to education, gender, rural/urban relation, and religious affiliation. In this paper, we have relied on the analysis of secondary EVS (European Value Study) data based on a survey conducted in all European countries. The hypotheses we started from in the paper were that as the level of education increases, the level of trust in church decreases, and that the attitude towards church is more negative, that women have a more positive attitude towards church and greater trust than men, that the level of trust is higher and there is a more positive attitude towards church in the village compared to the city, and that there is a higher degree of trust and a positive attitude towards church, i.e. religious communities, among Muslims compared to Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants. Theoretically, our assumptions are based on secularization theory. In this sense, social changes have diminished the impact of religion in society, and individuals are influenced by the mechanisms of a profane society. We have focused on the citizens of Serbia, where the effects of transition made the position of religion more complex.
