The Crisis of Religious Institutions and Its Impact on Religiosity. The Case of Poland

Abstract

It would be valuable on the basis of sociology religion to concentrate on the crisis of religious institutions and its impact on religiosity in the contemporary sociological discussions. According to theories of secularization, the crisis is a symptom of a broader process of secularization and it is related to the structural changes. In turn, the economic theories assume the crisis as a consequence of some non-effectiveness of religious institutions to the needs of the believers. Both approaches seem to provide interesting solutions to the problem. Here, I took a midway position I found that the structural changes decrease the ability of religious institutions to organize religious life of its members and, in result, the members are less and less satisfied with them. In addition, this process has its own impact on their religiosity. The main consequence of the crisis is the decline in church attendance. In order to verify the assumptions I used the data on Polish Catholics from two surveys carried out in 1999 and 2008 as the part of the European Values Servey. The outcomes of the statistical analysis seem to confirm the above assumptions.

Keywords

• religiosity
• secularization
• catholic church
• european values study
• deinstitutionalization of religion