Communicating Religion and Atheism in Central and Eastern Europe

Jenny Vorpahl, Dirk Schuster

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783110546552
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Atheism

This book brings together case studies dealing with historical as well as recent phenomena in former socialist nations, which testify the transfer of knowledge about religion and atheism. The material is connected on a semantic level by the presence of a historical watershed before and after socialism as well as on a theoretical level by the sociology of knowledge. With its focus on Central and Eastern Europe this volume is an important contribution to the research on nonreligion and secularity.
The collected volume deals with agents and media within specific cultural and historical contexts. Theoretical claims and conceptions by single agents and/or institutions in which the imparting of knowledge about religion and atheism was or is a central assignment, are analyzed. Additionally, procedures of transmitting knowledge about religion and atheism and of sustaining related institutionalized norms, interpretations, roles and practices are in the focus of interest.
The book opens the perspective for the multidimensional and negotiating character of legitimation processes, being involved in the establishment or questioning of the institutionalized opposition between religion and atheism or religion and science.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• “This book is the book of truth” – Introduction
• The rise and fall of the ‘Marxist sociology of religion’ in the GDR
• Beginnings of a Soviet sociology of religion and the (anti‐)religiosity of Muscovite workers (1925 – 1932) Creating the antireligious subject
• Rejected but not forgotten Scientific atheism’s concepts in contemporary Russia
• Distancing, defamation, criminalization Religion-related vocabulary in GDR dictionaries
• (Un)willing fellow or enemy? The public discourse on religion in Czechoslovakia in the first two decades of communist rule and the divergent responses of the churches
• From indoctrination to testimonials The book gifts for Jugendweihe in the GDR and reunified Germany
• “Proletarian culture does not fall from heaven”  Patterns of legitimation in the reception of ritual traditions in the GDR
• Christian heritage in the art policy of the German Democratic Republic
• The importance of a meaningless 1989 Romanian political theologies and the religious left
• Religion in the public and private sphere Changes in religious knowledge in Hungary since 1945
• Transfer of knowledge about atheism and new religious movements Analysis of religious instruction textbooks in public schools in Croatia
• Science as an alternative symbolic universe among members and organizations of nonreligious people and atheists in Croatia
• Religious knowledge as the common ground The case study of atheists on catholic online forums in Poland
• Central results
• List of Contributors
• Subject Index