Slovakia

Slovakia is a central European country formerly joined with the Czech Republic to create the nation of Czechoslovakia within the Soviet bloc. Since the end of the Cold War, Slovakia has been independent. The Slovak cultural identity has been significantly influenced by the fact that it has always been part of the Western Latin culture, which brought rationalism, individualism, and eventually also humanism to people's thinking and behavior. Though dominantly Roman Catholic, contemporary Slovak religious society is distinctively postmodern, especially in its pluralism of beliefs and practices. The postmodernization of religion in Slovakia has manifested itself through a growing number of followers—particularly in the minority religions—a continual rise in the number of new religious movements, greater participation of laymen in church activities, and a higher proportion of young people and intellectuals being part of the modern religious population.

At the same time, parallel to these trends, the conservative tendencies in the traditional churches are growing stronger. Despite the global phenomenon of secularization, religiosity in the Slovak republic is becoming more important according to census data. We can see a growing number of citizens affiliating themselves with a church or a religious group. Also, the number of the people who do not declare membership in any church or religious group and describe themselves as nonreligious has grown. The number of people affiliating themselves with a different religious group or church has risen too. This rise can be attributed to the establishment of new religious groups in Slovak society. In comparison to other former Eastern Bloc countries and considering the secular tendencies in Europe, we can conclude that the situation in Slovakia is unusual, and such a high degree of religiosity (from the quantitative point of view) in the given geographic area is exceptional. It shows that gradual pluralism is taking place, and new forms of religious practices are emerging. There are 18 registered churches and religious groups and approximately 200 unregistered religious groups in Slovakia presently. The success of small churches creates a precondition for a gradual change of the structure of Slovakia's denomination map while preserving the monopolistic position of Christianity in its various forms.

The largest section of nonregistered religious groups consists of movements of Christian origin—just below 50% compared with followers of neopagan groups and groups of oriental origin. The various messianic groups have the lowest number of members. Slovakia is one of the countries where a traditional pastoral environment and the type of traditional “inherited” religiosity connected with it disappear in proportion to the process of modernization that is in progress here. “Rustic piety” becomes marginalized, while fundamentalist and sectarian religiosities are in demand, and more personal, more sophisticated, and more individual beliefs are growing. A gradual strong shift from ritually moralizing religion to spirituality focused on meditation or mystic experience is taking place. The main reasons for this are lack of confidence in religious institutions, especially in the Catholic Church, which is due to the complicated religious development in Slovakia in the [Page 1185]remote past; strong anti-Catholic interpretation of the national identity as a result of the communist propaganda, which forced the church out of public life from 1948 to 1989; and the scandalous portrayal of churches in tabloids since 1989.

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