Social Compass

http://scp.sagepub.com/

The Rise of ''Cultural Religion'' in European Christianity: Learning from

Poland, Northern Ireland, and Sweden
N. J. DEMERATH III
Social Compass 2000 47: 127
DOI: 10.1177/003776800047001013

The online version of this article can be found at:

http://scp.sagepub.com/content/47/1/127

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Social Compass can be found at:

Email Alerts: http://scp.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

Subscriptions: http://scp.sagepub.com/subscriptions

Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

Citations: http://scp.sagepub.com/content/47/1/127.refs.html

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011

 Social Compass 47(1), 2000, 127–139

N. J. DEMERATH III

The Rise of ‘‘Cultural Religion’’ in

European Christianity: Learning from
Poland, Northern Ireland, and Sweden

This article draws on a global, 15-nation comparative study of religion,

politics, and the state. The three countries at issue here may seem more
peripheral than central to Europe, but all represent important aspects of the
late 20th-century European experience—whether the tension between religion
and secularity in Poland, the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in
Northern Ireland, or the final sigh of religious disestablishment in Sweden.
While unpacking these different scenarios, the author uncovers a shared
phenomenon of ‘‘cultural religion’’.

L’article est tiré d’une étude comparative globale d’une quinzaine de nations
sur les rapports entre religion, politique et Etat. Les trois pays dont il est
question ici peuvent paraître plus périphériques que centraux en Europe, mais
tous les trois représentent des aspects importants de l’expérience européenne
de cette fin du 20ème siècle: les tensions entre religion et monde séculier en
Pologne, le conflit entre protestants et catholiques en Irlande du Nord, le
désétablissement de la religion en Suède. Tout en explorant ces différents
scénarios, l’auteur dévoile l’existence d’un phénomène de ‘‘religion
culturelle’’.

It is presumptuous for any non-European to hazard a description of Europe,

and all the more so when it is based on only three countries. However,
Poland, Northern Ireland, and Sweden triangulate the continent from its
flanks and highlight different relationships between religion and politics.
They also join in illustrating a common syndrome of ‘‘cultural religion’’ by
which religion affords a sense of personal identity and continuity with the
past even after participation in ritual and belief have lapsed. Arguably one
of the world’s most common forms of religious involvement, it is also one of
the most neglected by scholars. I shall elaborate the phenomenon in the
paper’s conclusion after briefly describing each country in its own terms.

Catholicism as both Solution and Problem in Poland

There are Polish jokes even in Poland. Question: How many Poles does it
take to change the world? Answer: one. Of course, part of the humor is a
matter of pride in playing off the many Polish jokes whose answers involve
0037–7686[200003]47:1;127–139;012221

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011

128 Social Compass 47(1)

so many Poles. But another part of the humor suffers in translation across
both cultures and time. So does the punch line. In the 1970s, the solitary
referent might well have been the new Polish Pope John Paul II, the former
Cardinal Wojtyla of Krakow. But by the late 1980s, there was another figure
who fitted so perfectly that the joke needed no explanation in Poland, or in
much of the West generally. This was Lech Walesa, the former shipyard
worker in Gdansk who won a Nobel Peace Prize for leading the Solidarity
workers’ movement that collaborated with the Catholic Church in bringing
down the communist government put in place by the Soviets just after the
Second World War.
Because of the Solidarity-enhanced stature of the Catholic Church,
Catholicism became a criterion of national identity. To be Polish was to be
Catholic; supporting the new Poland involved attending the old services.
But there was now a tendency to forget that Catholicism was not the only
Polish religion, and certainly not the only religion that had played a major
role in Polish history (Volenski and Grzymala-Mosczynska, 1997). It is true
that Polish history itself is elusive, since the country’s borders have shifted
with virtually every war and consequent redrawing of boundaries over some
200 years. Still, there have been times when Poland was 40 percent non-
Catholic and included large Lutheran and Jewish communities.
Not surprisingly, the role of religion in Poland has been seen by some as
an invitation and inspiration for politicized religion everywhere. Not long
ago, sociologist Jose Casanova (1994) compared the emerging public role of
religion in Spain, Brazil, and Poland. The Spanish case involved the role of
Catholicism preceding and immediately following the death of the dictator
Franco in 1975; Brazil’s involved the rise of Liberation Theology
(1960–1985), and Poland’s concerned the powerful public alliance between
Polish Catholicism and Solidarity (1979–1989). On a quick first reading,
Casanova’s work appears to celebrate a major new development, as religion
gains increasing public and political prominence in Europe, Latin America,
and by implication elsewhere. And certainly there are readers for whom the
message is welcome. However, Casanova’s conclusions are actually more
nuanced and more qualified. Initially, the Church’s successful collaboration
in bringing down communism left Catholicism not only riding high but
aiming higher. Subsequently, it seems to have overplayed its hand and
converted widespread adulation into considerable alienation. This resumes
a long tradition of anti-clericalism on the part of a laity that is nonetheless
fearful of the Church and its power.
On a rainy day in Krakow, I was waiting at a neighborhood bus stop with
a Polish professor who pointed at the adjacent lot containing an old frame
structure and a brand new brick building:
‘‘That’s our parish church. Just after 1989, the priests announced that it was now time to
raise money for a new building. The economy was still in shambles and everyone was
pretty destitute. Nevertheless we all scrimped and struggled to raise enough for the new
building. But it was only then that the priests announced that the new building was for
their quarters; the church is still the same drafty, dilapidated structure.’’

Such incidents don’t help the Church’s image. Nor does the cynical Polish

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011

 Demerath: The Rise of ‘‘Cultural Religion’’ 129

adage that if you want your son to live the good life and drive a Mercedes,
don’t send him into law or medicine, but get him into the priesthood.
Perhaps this accounts for Poland’s surfeit of priests, in contrast to the
shortages that plague the Catholic Church elsewhere in the West.
But there is another, more political reason for the rising disenchantment.
Almost immediately after the new government was formed in 1989, the
Catholic ecclesiastical leadership began to demand religious instruction in
the public schools and government action that would effectively ban both
elective abortion and divorce (Michel, 1991; Ramet, 1997; Wesolowski,
1995). After calling on the help of President Walesa, whom it helped elect,
the Church won two out of three. Catechistic instruction in the schools
continues to be widely accepted, even though it was implemented against
the better judgement of the Minister of Education. However, the new limits
on abortion were never popular to begin with and have become less so.
Surveys show that, although some three-quarters of the population agree
that Catholicism is a major pillar and have no objection to religion in the
schools, a majority feel that the Church ought to stay out of politics, a
sentiment shared by two-thirds of those who attend church regularly. All of
this is important background to the decline in the Church’s overall approval
ratings from close to 90 percent in 1989 to 57 percent in 1995 (Grzymala-
Moszcynska, 1996).
What then does it mean that more than 90 percent of Poles are Catholics?
According to one observer-respondent, ‘‘There really are two types: the
religious Catholics and the family Catholics.’’ But even the former vary. As
another put it, ‘‘Being religious in Poland means one and only one thing–
attending church on Sunday.’’ In fact, the proportion claiming regular
church attendance is well over 60 percent, an astonishingly high figure
compared to countries in western Europe, or even the United States, though
some experts expect the percentage to decline.
Meanwhile, ‘‘family Catholics’’ see the Church as an ethical ally in raising
children at a time when youth are seen as anarchical, anomic, or, perhaps
worst of all, ‘‘post-modern’’. Youth are often depicted as lurching between
meaningless self-indulgence and an intense enthrallment to the spirit of the
moment. As one interviewee put it, ‘‘Many parents believe—or at least
believe they believe—because they need the Church as an ally.’’ They
approve of religious instruction in the public schools not so much because it
is religious as such, but because any moral port will suffice in a relativistic
storm. These are adherents who lean upon the Church even as they are
suspicious of it; followers who hunger for its communal and horizontal
dimension even as they recoil from its hierarchical verticality.
But perhaps there is a third form of Catholicism. While giving a class at
Warsaw University, I asked the students to talk a little about their own
religiosity. They all said they were Catholics, but beyond that seemed
puzzled, reticent, and not a little embarrassed. I wondered if the distinction
between religious Jews and cultural Jews might be applicable? At this
suggestion, they visibly brightened and clamored to speak. That was pre-
cisely it: they were ‘‘cultural Catholics’’. They weren’t really believers, and
while they attended church at least sporadically, they had a good deal of

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011

130 Social Compass 47(1)

contempt for some of the Church officials and policies (Doktor, 1999). Still,
Catholicism was part of their national and family cultural heritage, and they
were proud of what the Church had done to help free Poland from the
communist regime.
Today the phrase ‘‘cultural Catholicism’’ has begun to resonate through-
out western Europe. As Poland moves deeper into the Western economic
and political orbit, this may be a religious concomitant. Certainly it is a far
different way of reducing the possibility of religious hegemony than was
recently demonstrated in nearby Russia. Whereas Poland’s response
involves a voluntary cultural shift, Russia’s answer as of 1997 took the form
of draconian legislation that would essentially outlaw all but a few accepted
religions, such as the Russian Orthodox Church which claims the allegiance
of half the population but will itself be placed under state controls. Aimed
ostensibly at proselytizing foreign sects and cults, the action places all
religions on guard.

Northern Ireland and a Political Future Held Hostage to a

Religious Past

Happily, much has changed in Northern Ireland since my visit in October

1993. Although it took more than five years, a Catholic-initiated ceasefire
(on the back of the Hume–Adams initiative, also from the Catholic side)
finally led to a negotiated settlement, followed in turn by elections for a new
Northern Irish political assembly. While the journey to peace is far from
over, at least some first crucial steps have been taken. Here I want to
describe the Northern Ireland that I encountered and the reasons why such
peace-making was so slow in coming. Whereas my account of Poland tended
to focus on events since its political transformation in 1989, here I want to
reverse the emphasis and stress factors that preceded the Northern Irish
breakthrough in 1998. Again I have relied on both personal observations
and an impressive scholarly literature (e.g. Darby et al., 1990; Whyte, 1990;
Wright, 1990; O’Day, 1997).
Violence has become a way of life for many of the 1.5 million residents of
this small, embattled country. From 1969 to 1994, the civil strife cost some
3300 deaths in Northern Ireland and such ‘‘overspill’’ areas as England, the
Irish Republic, and mainland Europe, where terrorism has been exported
partly for political display. Nor do these figures include the thousands who
have been physically and psychologically crippled. There is also a cynical
account that in this war of often amateurish terrorists, each side has inflicted
more casualties on its own ranks by accident than on the opposition by
design.
If there is a true religious conflict anywhere in the world, surely this is it.
But surprisingly, I found many there who disputed the diagnosis. Certainly
this is not a battle of churches. In fact, the relatively small groups of
extremists on both sides are notably non-religious. Catholic clergy have
been consistently critical of the nominally Catholic Irish Republican Army
(IRA) for its use of violence. The same is true of the mostly Anglican and

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011

 Demerath: The Rise of ‘‘Cultural Religion’’ 131

Presbyterian clerics on the Protestant side. Even the best-known leader of

the Ulster Unionists, the fulminating evangelical Reverend Ian Paisley, has
faulted the violence on both sides. Overall religious participation is con-
siderably higher in Northern Ireland than in Britain, or Europe overall. But
over the past 25 years, the ranks of the non-religious have grown from 1
percent to 12 percent. Still, church-goers are not the problem. There are
other ways for religion to be implicated in conflict besides the formal actions
of its clergy or its active parishioners (Fulton, 1991).
Earlier I noted the ‘‘cultural Catholics’’ in Poland as an analog to
‘‘cultural Jews’’. The phenomenon is also common here. Indeed, perhaps
the most fundamental distinction in Northern Ireland is between cultural
Catholics and cultural Protestants. Neither is much involved in their chur-
ches, but both are caught up in the religious legacies handed down from
family to family, neighborhood to neighborhood, and community to com-
munity. As one respondent put it, ‘‘When you meet a stranger here at a
party or some other gathering, the first thing to be established is not your
occupation but your religious identity.’’ And as another noted, ‘‘Even if you
are an atheist, you are either a Catholic or a Protestant atheist.’’
It is hard to escape these labels. Children quickly learn to distinguish
Protestants from Catholics by their vocabulary, their pronunciation, and
their dress. Sometimes safety depends upon it. But then, like most Euro-
pean societies—indeed like most societies in the world in contrast to my
own—personal identity in Northern Ireland is more ‘‘retrospective’’ than
‘‘prospective’’. That is, one is judged more by what happened in one’s past
rather than by what one is accomplishing now or likely to in the future. Your
parents’ and grandparents’ religion, ethnic origins, occupation and educa-
tional attainment are all essential parts of your own identity, as are your own
educational achievements—not just how much, but from what schools and
with what honors. Once this identity package is established by young
adulthood, it is very difficult to shake off. While some of this applies in the
United States, our prospective culture orients more to the present and the
future; it is more forgiving of the past but more demanding in the here and
now.
It is not just in matters of personal identity that the present is haunted by
the past. In Northern Ireland, one feels history hovering over every institu-
tion, and it is far more common to address what has occurred rather than
what might or could. A priestly informant was especially pointed in remark-
ing that, ‘‘The Catholic Church needs to address the future rather than the
past.’’ But the sentiment applies equally to Protestants. In fact, there is an
almost audible sense of a clock ticking in the most infamous center of
loyalist religion: Ian Paisley’s evangelical ‘‘Martyrs’ Memorial’’ Free Pres-
byterian Church in East Belfast. The church is something of a renegade
since it is self-labeled Presbyterian and not a member of the denomination
itself. And in a congregation so deeply enveloped in the past, one must
wonder how the parishioners interpret the motto chiseled above the
entrance: ‘‘Time is Short’’ (Wallis et al., 1986).
Meanwhile, if Northern Ireland is divided by different cultural religions at
the individual level, it is also afflicted with competing ‘‘civil religions’’ at the

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011

132 Social Compass 47(1)

societal level. Ideally a nation has only one consolidating civil religion.
Having two involves not so much an embarrassment of riches as a nullifying
conflict of competing principles. That is exactly the situation in Northern
Ireland. Both religious communities have their own sacred events and
symbols, their own fraternal orders, and their own versions of both the past
and the future. Rather than unite the nation, civil religion has become an
enduring source of division. Clearly religion in Northern Ireland is
important—though perhaps more negatively than positively, and more
sociologically than theologically.
Optimists were rare in Northern Ireland in 1993; skepticism had become
a matter of course. After all, if rain today is generally a predictor of rain
tomorrow, the country has every reason to carry umbrellas at the ready. The
Hume–Adams initiative mentioned earlier was by no means the first
attempt to negotiate an end to the country’s ‘‘troubles’’—though it was the
first to be publicly supported by Sinn Fein. Anyone expressing more than
the most guarded hope was apt to be regarded as either deluded or
uninformed. It is true that the extremists on both sides constitute very small
minorities. However, one sympathetic Catholic remarked, ‘‘They also have
their share of gangsters and murderers.’’ And as a liberal Protestant
churchman put it, ‘‘Each side needs to be protected from its own flanks and
to protect the other from its worst fears.’’
But protecting the centers from the periphery has not been easy. It is a
measure of the stalemate’s perversity that it may be partially understood by
standing two common explanatory frameworks on their heads. First, instead
of regarding violence solely as a consequence, it has become a cause in its
own right. And second, solutions to the conflict have become part of the
problem.
Over the years, violence has begotten violence in a tit-for-tat spiral that
soon loses touch with first blame and first causes. As both a way of life and
a means of livelihood for its perpetrators, it has also become a point of
orientation for its victims and bystanders. Northern Ireland’s routinization
of violence resembles the family that so adjusts to an alcoholic in its midst
that it comes to depend upon the pathology as the node of all interactions.
And requiring a total ceasefire and arms surrender as a pre-condition for
negotiations simply puts more power in the hands of the violent few—
including those idiosyncratic misanthropes on each side who are beyond
even the control of the IRA and the Ulster Volunteer Force, respectively.
As for solutions becoming problems, each possible denouement has been so
tainted by past disappointments and continuing fears that it becomes
another reason to maintain the status quo. Under such circumstances, grass
on the other side of the fence becomes just so much poison ivy.
Understandably, then, a fatalistic pessimism had penetrated the cultural
core on ‘‘both sides’’. And yet when I returned from Northern Ireland, I was
strangely buoyant. Somehow I sensed that the light at the end of the tunnel
was not just the headlights of another armored vehicle patrolling a dark
Belfast street. I had the palpable feeling of change occurring, and much
more in the offing. While I realized the danger of being seduced as a naive
foreign observer, I also knew that resident veterans of the conflict could be

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011

 Demerath: The Rise of ‘‘Cultural Religion’’ 133

seduced by cynicism. If there was a single word that accounted for my mood,
it was ‘‘demography’’. At the time of partition in 1921, Catholics constituted
roughly one-quarter of the Northern Irish population; they now comprise
more than 40 percent and are closing fast on the voting majority necessary
to control the country’s political fate. The change is only partly (and
decliningly) a matter of differential fertility. Some one in 16 marriages are
now Protestant–Catholic unions, with the great majority landing in the
Catholic fold. As noted earlier, many Protestants see the political writing on
the colorfully emblazoned walls and are emigrating out of Northern Ireland
altogether. According to a recent survey, some 80 percent of Belfast’s
church-going Protestants foresee a Catholic majority in their lifetime.
In fact, some of the Protestants without the resources to leave Belfast or
the country at large are increasingly desperate and paranoid. They see
themselves as involved in the same sort of heroic siege that occupied their
Londonderry ancestors in 1689. But in the unkind phrase of one Catholic
republican: ‘‘As some rats jump ship, it leaves others cornered.’’ Under
these circumstances, one grotesque portent of change is the last paroxysm of
violence that often stems from the extremist fringes of the once powerful
who are now threatened with powerlessness. The syndrome is a global
recurrence. It is no surprise that we can now add a group like the Ulster
Freedom Fighters to the list (Bruce, 1992). Quite apart from the moral
issues here, the sociological dynamic is in the time-honored tradition of
losers everywhere for whom violence is a final option.
As the United States learned from its own civil rights struggle, the only
way to reduce cultural hostility is to constrain the behavior associated with
it. Once the offending behavior is ended, the associated cultural and
psychological dispositions tend to wither for lack of enactment and rein-
forcement. But the process is neither quick nor easy, and the question
remains whether there will be sufficient political resolve to stay the
course.

Sweden and the Twilight of a Religious Establishment

When I began my cross-cultural odyssey, I was eager to find countries as

unlike the United States as possible. In particular I looked for countries that
had an official national church—as opposed to our church–state
separation—and societies where traditional religion was an acknowledged
dying ember—as opposed to the licking flames of our own religious firebox.
Little did I realize that I would find both attributes in a single case. But then
Sweden is a country whose religious paradox has been a mirror image of our
own. Here the dominant religion is both official and anachronistic—
although as we shall see, at least the first of these characteristics is shortly to
change.
The Lutheran Evangelical Church of Sweden became the country’s state
religion effectively in 1523 when King Gustav Vasa took charge of both the
state and the Church, and formally in 1593 when the establishment was
officially proclaimed (Bergendoff, 1965). However, after some 200 years of

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011

134 Social Compass 47(1)

hegemony, it began to make concessions. Sweden enacted a constitutional

guarantee of freedom of religion in l809, although compulsory church
attendance was not abandoned until l858.
By the turn of the 20th century, rural communities in the throes of
winter’s eternal darkness near the Arctic Circle continued to center around
church congregations, but this was much less true of Stockholm and other
growing urban areas to the south. Ingmar Bergman’s great film ‘‘Fanny and
Alexander’’ captures the growing rift between secular and sacred by con-
trasting the colorful delights of an irreverent Christmas celebration in a
wealthy home with the stark and gloomy pessimism of a traditional
Lutheran parish with all of its patriarchal authoritarianism intact. The latter
was even then fighting a losing war. The first public consideration of
‘‘disestablishing’’ church and state occurred in 1909, though it was not until
1951 that citizens were allowed to legally leave the Church.
By the mid-20th century, the Church’s official status was increasingly
belied by religion’s declining participation and cultural diffidence. Today
Swedish religiosity ranks at the bottom of nearly every ranking of the
world’s industrialized nations—whether the measure involves church
attendance, belief in God or various other doctrinal tenets. Nor is this
simply a matter of public lassitude and indifference to churches on the part
of the privately pious. According to Gunnar Boalt (1984), only 44 percent of
Swedes agreed that ‘‘the world would be better if people followed the
Christian ideals’’ and fewer still, 37 percent, say ‘‘I myself try to live like a
Christian.’’
Unlike countries where religion is on the tip of both the popular and
demagogic tongue, here it elicits more yawns than passion (Ejerfelt, 1984).
In many respects, Sweden’s state religion is more a nostalgic vestige than a
vital institution. The great majority of its active parishioners are over the
age of 60. The Church is respected more in death than in life, for church
burials are the one ritual that continues to be compelling for more than 90
percent of the population. Even most non-church members continue to pay
40 percent of the annual church tax to be eligible for such burials—an
amount that may exceed $100 yearly.
Meanwhile, the Church of Sweden’s relation to the state is a matter of life
and death—but not in the conventional sense. The single most important
state function rendered by the Church of Sweden is compiling national
census figures. In each of the nation’s 2500 parishes, the clergy serves as
vastly overtrained census takers, for which the church receives government
remuneration. While some of the ‘‘free churches’’ have complained about
possible biases in this system, the system passes formal demographic muster
quite well. In fact, every Swedish citizen pays a one percent tax on income to
cover the costs of such church administrative functions and the attendant
costs of providing marriage and burial services.
Even the Church’s national symbolic stature is limited. Perhaps the
clearest test here involves religion’s role in a societal crisis. Consider, for
example, the still unsolved 1984 assassination of the country’s Prime
Minister—social scientist, Olaf Palme—as he emerged from a Stockholm
movie theater (Mosey, 1991). As at the deaths of many other national

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011

 Demerath: The Rise of ‘‘Cultural Religion’’ 135

figures, there was no state funeral (though Palme and his predecessor had
private burial services). While church attendance in the week following the
assassination was high, it was not easy to disaggregate the religious, polit-
ical, and national sentiments involved. In fact, responses of appreciation to
a widely circulated prayer composed by the Bishop of Stockholm may be
especially revealing. They tended to refer not to the Bishop’s prayer but to
his ‘‘poem’’. He interpreted this as evidence that Swedish religion is so
deeply embedded in the national psyche as to be impossible to articulate; an
alternative explanation is that religion may be disappearing altogether.
Sweden may be one of the few societies in the world whose ‘‘civil
religion’’ bears little relation to its conventional religion (Ejerfelt, 1984).
Instead the nation’s sense of itself is organized far more around its commit-
ment to democratic welfare liberalism (Brakenheilm, 1995). This pattern of
secularization applies across Scandinavia, where Sweden, Denmark and
Norway vie for standing in the trend (Riis, 1994). Religion is increasingly
taken for granted as a historical legacy rather than a living presence
(Goransson, l984). The country’s nearly 9 million people remain almost 90
percent Lutheran by heritage if not conviction, but one might ask how much
longer the state can remain officially Lutheran? After all, less than half of
the polled citizenry, 48 percent, opposed such a change as early as l968, and
the proportion had dropped to 3l percent by l987.
Finally, in 1995, Parliament acted to sever the cord in the millennial year
2000 when the constitution will have been rewritten as a compromise
between full Church–state separation and continued state–Church subven-
tion for the sake of cultural history and continuing secular services
rendered.
Sweden is not the only western European country where the question of
disestablishment has emerged. Nor is the issue restricted to Scandinavia. In
recent years, Italy has renegotiated and greatly minimized its concordat
with the Vatican, and there is a good deal of loose talk about a severing of
British ties with the Anglican Church of England (Davie, 1994). Indeed, I
recall raising the matter during a small conference on religion and democ-
racy held several years ago in a country estate outside Oxford. The
conference included elite British Anglicans from Parliament, Oxbridge, and
the media establishment, on the one hand, and a number of prominent
leaders of the growing British Muslim community, on the other. As an
American outsider, I wondered aloud if Parliament had given any serious
consideration to disestablishment? One particularly prominent Conserva-
tive Party member chuckled and congratulated me for being so ‘‘wry’’
before insisting that ‘‘everyone knows’’ that the Anglican Church is now just
a charming historical artifact and no longer a matter of substance. The
response drew nods of approval from the English elite in the room, but there
was a sound of Muslim teeth grinding, and one could easily imagine the
response of Northern Irish Catholics. Whatever influence Anglicanism may
have lost in Britain, much of British politics, personal law, and criminal law
remain stamped by their Anglican origins. By the same token, Sweden will
remain Lutheran for some time to come without an unlikely sort of cultural
and political purging that goes far beyond disestablishment itself. That is a

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011

136 Social Compass 47(1)

macro-form of cultural religion that is far more powerful than its micro-
equivalent.

A Concluding Conceptual Note on ‘‘Cultural Religion’’

Perhaps there was once a time when scholars of religion could assume a
consensus on what constituted religion. If so, that time is long gone. Not
only are there widening differences between religion, spirituality, and the
sacred, but there are whole analytic traditions devoted to sectarian religion,
churchly religion, and civil religion, not to mention that triumph of euphe-
mism over cultic substance: ‘‘new religious movements’’. Here I want to
pause and parse one more category on the list: ‘‘cultural religion’’.
Earlier I noted that in Northern Ireland even atheists are identified as
Catholics or Protestants. Barker (1997) reports a conversation with an
Armenian woman who insisted that her non-religious sons are nevertheless
Christians and certainly not to be confused with members of a burgeoning
local cult. Such instances suggest a style of religion that resides ‘‘in the
culture’’ without compelling active belief or participation. Substantial pro-
portions of all three populations described here are aligned with a particular
religious tradition without partaking of its beliefs or rituals. Their religion is
less one of present conviction or commitment than of continuity with
generations past and contrast with rival groups and identities. Indeed,
identity is pivotal to the phenomenon, for religion has always ranked with
ethnicity, nationality, and social class as a salient marker of personhood.
And at a time when ascriptions of all sorts seem to be under siege and
undergoing change, we may be especially reluctant to let go of those that set
us apart.
In many societies around the world—and perhaps especially in Europe—
cultural religion may represent the single largest category of religious
orientation. But there is a paradoxical, even oxymoronic quality to cultural
religion. It involves a label that is self-applied even though it is not self-
affirmed. It is a way of being religiously connected without being religiously
active. It is a recognition of a religious community but with a lapsed
commitment to the core practices around which the community originally
formed. It is a tribute to the religious past that offers little confidence for the
religious future.
The basic idea is hardly new. Like any concept, its roots are traceable in
various directions. The close relationship between religion and culture has a
long lineage. Ironically, it may receive its most eloquent support from
Clifford Geertz, whose very definitions of the two phenomena can be read
interchangeably (Geertz, 1973: 89–90). Cultural religion is also redolent of
Danièle Hervieu-Léger’s (1993) ‘‘chains of memory’’ and Grace Davie’s
(1994) ‘‘believing without belonging’’. In all of this, there is something
intuitively compelling. And yet there are also further questions worth
pursuing.
Cultural religion may represent the penultimate stage of religious
secularization—the last loose bond of religious attachment before the ties

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011

 Demerath: The Rise of ‘‘Cultural Religion’’ 137

are let go altogether. Indeed it may help to examine secularization as a

process that occurs by stages instead of a sudden tumble into a godless void.
At the level of the individual, it is worth asking how these stages typically
follow each other, or what the various pathways may be under varying
conditions. For example, in so far as Christianity is a religion of the ‘‘word’’,
it is possible that ritual behavior erodes before a certain elemental faith that
involves tenets as cultural symbols rather than cognitive convictions. But for
religions of the ‘‘act’’ such as Judaism and Islam, it may be the beliefs that go
first with ritual participation the last to go. Of course, cultural religion
involves the eclipse of both belief and ritual but not a primordial sense of
cultural continuity. As a last stop prior to full secularization, it may have
fallen between the stools of religious orthodoxy, on the one hand, and a
thoroughgoing secularism, on the other.
If the conventional religious credentials of cultural religion are dubious
and waning, it may retain political and institutional roles that go beyond
individual participation. As in the case of British Anglicanism, there is a
powerful current of past religion that continues to be reflected in contempo-
rary laws, customs, and practices. Both Poland and Northern Ireland
illustrate its importance as a reservoir of what Rhys Williams and I have
termed ‘‘cultural power’’ (Demerath and Williams, 1992; Williams and
Demerath, 1998). Past symbols and meanings echo well into the present and
may still be called upon to mobilize the faithful and ‘‘faithless’’ alike. This is
especially likely when one’s cultural religion is juxtaposed with another
conflicting tradition, as among Polish Catholics in the presence of commu-
nism, and Catholics and Protestants in the presence of each other in
Northern Ireland. In so far as the cultural religion of Swedish Lutheranism
seems more indolent, this may well be due to the lack of the kind of conflict
that has occurred in Poland and Northern Ireland. After all, our identities
are heavily dependent on a sharp sense of who we are not.
At the same time, one might ask whether the ‘‘culturally religious’’ need
deeper commitments with more compelling participation, and if so, where
do they find them? Students of religion spend far more time debating the
secularization of older faiths than examining the sacralization of newer
‘‘religious’’ equivalents.
Cultural religion may well become a dominant syndrome in the post-
millennial West, if it is not already. While new and resurgent forms of
conventional religion will no doubt continue to wax and wane, the present’s
revisionist construction of the past will always be a vital factor in shaping the
future of every cultural institution, most particularly religion. Any source of
personal and collective identity has sacred meanings that go beyond the
mundane. If cultural religion represents a penultimate stage of seculariza-
tion, it may be enough to assure that the ultimate stage is rarely realized.

References
Barker, Eileen (1997) ‘‘But Who’s Going to Win? National and Minority Religions
in Post-Communist Society’’, in Irena Borowik and Grzegorz Babinki (eds) New
Religious Phenomena in Central and Eastern Europe. Krakow: Nomos.

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011

138 Social Compass 47(1)

Bergendoff, Conrad (1965) Olavus Petri and the Ecclesiastical Transformation in

Sweden, 1521–1552. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press.
Boalt, Gunnar (1984) The Political Process. Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell Inter-
national.
Brakenheilm, Ronald (1995) ‘‘Christianity and Swedish Culture: A Case Study’’,
International Review of Mission 84(332), Jan.–April: 91–106.
Bruce, Steve (1992) The Red Hand: Loyalist Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Casanova, Jose (1994) Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: The Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
Darby, John, Dodge, Nicholas and Hepburn, A.C. (1990) Political Violence: Ireland
in a Comparative Perspective. Belfast: Appletree Press.
Davie, Grace (1994) Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing Without Belonging.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Demerath, N.J. III (2000) Crossing the Gods: Religion, Violence, Politics, and the
State Across the World. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Demerath, N.J. III and Williams, Rhys H. (1992) A Bridging of Faiths: Religion and
Politics in a New England City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Doktór, Tadeusz (1999) ‘‘The ‘New Age’ Worldview of Polish Students’’, Social
Compass 46(2): 215–224.
Ejerfelt, Lennart (1984) ‘‘Civil Religion: Made in Sweden’’, in Bela Harmati (ed.)
The Church and Civil Religion in the Nordic Countries of Europe, pp. 79–87.
Geneva: Lutheran World Foundation.
Fulton, John (1991) The Tragedy of Belief: Division, Politics, and Religion in Ireland.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Geertz, Clifford (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Goransson, Goran (1984) ‘‘Church and Nation: A Changing Relationship in Swe-
den’’, in Bela Harmati (ed.) The Church and Civil Religion in the Nordic Countries
of Europe, pp. 72–78. Geneva: Lutheran World Foundation.
Grzymala-Moszcynska, Halina (1996) ‘‘Established Religions vs. New Religions:
Social Perceptions and Legal Consequences’’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies
33(1): 69–73.
Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (1993) La Réligion Pour Memoire. Paris: Cerf.
Michel, Patrick (1991) Politics and Religion in Eastern Europe. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Mosey, Chris (1991) Cruel Awakening: Sweden and the Killing of Olaf Palme. New
York: St Martin’s Press.
O’Day, Alan (ed.) (1997) Political Violence in Northern Ireland. Westport, CT:
Praeger.
Ramet, Sabrina P. (1997) Whose Democracy? Nationalism, Religion, and the
Doctrine of Collective Rights in Post-1989 Eastern Europe. Oxford: Lanham &
Littlefield, Inc.
Riis, Ole (1994) ‘‘Patterns of Secularization in Scandinavia’’, in O. Riis and T.
Pettersson (eds) Scandinavian Values. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press.
Volenski, Leonard T. and Grzymala-Moszcynska, Halina (1997) ‘‘Religious Plural-
ism in Poland’’, America 176(6), February.
Wallis, R., Bruce, S. and Taylor, D. (1986) No Surrender! Paisley and the Politics of
Ethnic Identity in Northern Ireland. Belfast: Belfast Press.
Wesolowski, Wlodzimierz (1995) ‘‘The Nature of Social Ties and the Future of
Postcommunist Society: Poland After Solidarity’’, in John A. Hall (ed.) Civil
Society: Theory, History, and Comparison. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Whyte, J.H. (1990) Interpreting Northern Ireland. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011

 Demerath: The Rise of ‘‘Cultural Religion’’ 139

Williams, Rhys H. and Demerath, N.J. III (1998) ‘‘Cultural Power: How Underdog
Religious and Nonreligious Movements Triumph Against Structural Odds’’, in
N.J. Demerath III et al. (eds) Sacred Companies: Organizational Aspects of
Religion and Religious Aspects of Organizations. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Wright, Frank (1990) Northern Ireland: A Comparative Analysis. Dublin: Gill &
Macmillan.

Jay DEMERATH III is Professor of Sociology at the University of

Massachusetts, Amherst and immediate past-President of the Society
for the Scientific Study of Religion. His work concerns various aspects
of the convergence of religion, culture, politics, and sociological theory.
ADDRESS: Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, MA 01002, USA.
[email: demerath@soc.umass.edu]

Downloaded from scp.sagepub.com at Jagiellonian University on March 19, 2011