Why We Are Becoming Less Religious
Sociologists asked about the reasons why Poles are giving up religious practice.
By Piotr Sikora
It is already an obvious fact that secularization in Poland is accelerating. It is worth understanding its causes, however. An important contribution to that understanding comes from CBOS research whose results were published at the end of August. Sociologists asked about the reasons why Poles are giving up religious practice. The survey results offer deeper insight into the mindset of those drifting away from religion, since the respondents formulated their answers themselves — the researchers then placed the data obtained into categories of their own devising.
The results generated considerable commentary, because — to the surprise of many observers — the single largest category of responses concerned not the state of the Church, but the simple disappearance of religious needs (17 percent of respondents cited this as their reason).
On this basis, many commentators advanced the thesis that it is precisely the disappearance of religious needs that is the primary cause of the abandonment of religious practice. This interpretation, however, holds true only for the younger generation. Among older and middle-aged people, motives related to a critical view of the Church and of priests continue to dominate (slightly more than half of respondents pointed to this kind of problem — sociologists placed their answers in several more specific categories).
The issues of an absence of religious needs and a loss of faith — in essence more fundamental than dissatisfaction with the state of the Church — predominate, however, among people under forty. And since secularization is advancing more rapidly among younger people than among older ones, within a decade or so this more fundamental form of secularization — a departure from religion as such — may come to dominate Polish society.
In this context, deeper reflection is needed not only on the reasons why people are leaving the Church, but on why they are ceasing to be religious at all — and on what is taking the place of faith in their lives.
Orginally published in Tygodnik Powszechny, 29 August 2022. Translated with AI.
