Intergenerational reproduction of non-religion in the Czech Republic

VIDO, Roman and Antonín PALEČEK. Intergenerational reproduction of non-religion in the Czech Republic. In 12th ISORECEA Conference & ESA RN34 Mid-Term Conference. 2016.

Basic information

Original name

Intergenerational reproduction of non-religion in the Czech Republic

Name in Czech

Mezigenerační reprodukce ne-náboženství v České republice

Authors

VIDO, Roman and Antonín PALEČEK

Edition

12th ISORECEA Conference & ESA RN34 Mid-Term Conference, 2016

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Other information

Language

English

Type of outcome

Prezentace na konferencích

Field of Study

50000 5. Social Sciences

Country of publisher

Czech Republic

Confidentiality degree

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

References:

URL

Organization unit

Faculty of Social Studies

Keywords (in Czech)

ateismus; sekularizace; integrenerační reprodukce; socializace; Česká republika

Keywords in English

atheism; secularization; intergenerational reproduction; socialization; Czech Republic

Tags

secularization, sociology of religion

Tags

International impact

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Abstract

V originále

The Czech Republic is regularly rated among the least religious countries in many international comparative surveys countries. Some sociological studies have noticed that the secular profile of the Czech Republic is exceptional even within the region of post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, whose religious development was strongly formed for almost a half-century by an explicitly anti-religious regime. Special attention is merited by the noticeable difference in the religious profiles of the populations of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, two countries that constituted one state for a significant period of the twentieth century. However, several studies by Czech scholars have been published in recent years that oppose the widely shared thesis that Czech society is the most atheist society in contemporary Europe. They argue that this thesis is based on a misunderstanding of the character of Czech religiosity, which is distinguished by a strong tendency towards privatization and individualization and high levels of distrust of traditional religious institutions, mainly the big Christian churches. This scholarly critique is grounded in empirical data that they interpret as evidence for the unsubstantiated mistaking of atheism for individualized and privatized spirituality. In this paper, we pursue two basic goals: first, to analyze in more detail the nature of Czech non-religiosity; and second, to study the patterns of inter-generational reproduction of non-religiosity in the Czech population. In our analysis, we combine the sociological (or socio-demographical) perspective with theoretical impulses from the cognitive study of religion.