The Sacralization of Politics? A Case Study of Hungary and Poland

Abstract

Religion influencing politics and politics impacting religion to achieve its own, very non-religious, goals are determining the reality of contemporary states and of global politics. Mutual relations between religion and nationalism have proven to be one of the most complex and unequivocal challenges shaping contemporary states in the areas of both their domestic and their foreign policies. This article is an attempt to compare two cases which are often wrongly perceived as twin models of links between religion and politics, namely Poland and Hungary. In both states, based either on actually present or on “constructed” Christian values, myths and symbols religious–national narratives have been developed by leading politicians (Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland and Viktor Orbán in Hungary) linked directly to the sacralization of ethnos (nation) and the ethnicization of religion. The conducted analysis has a theoretical character. The sacralization of nation and the ethnicization of religion occurring in Poland and Hungary are presented against quite different historical and cultural backgrounds and levels of religiosity/secularization in both countries. In order to explain this specificity, an analysis is performed upon a broader historical and cultural context and upon a specific understanding of religion and nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe.