Religinės mažumos, visuomenė ir valstybė šiuolaikinėje Lietuvoje : monografija
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2023 |
Religijų įvairovė yra kiekvienos šiuolaikinės visuomenės socialinė tikrovė, o religinės mažumos yra jos neatsiejama dalis. Mokslo monografijoje siekiama atskleisti religinių mažumų, visuomenės ir valstybės santykius šiuolaikinėje Lietuvoje pasitelkiant socioistorinę perspektyvą bei taikant sociologinę analizę. Monografijoje aptariamas religijų įvairovės reiškinys bei jo bruožai, religijos ir valstybės santykiai, religijų persekiojimo bei diskriminacijos dėl religijos problemos, religinių mažumų ir Lietuvos visuomenės santykių raida ir dinamika. Monografija bus naudinga visiems besidomintiems šiuolaikiniais religijų tyrimais – tyrėjams ir studentams, o taip pat religijos politikos formuotojams bei tiems, kurių gyvenimą tiesiogiai liečia šios politikos priemonės.
On September 8, 1991, the Lithuanian Roman Catholic Church Cardinal, Vincent Sladkevičius, and the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania, Vytautas Landsbergis, dedicated the country to the Blessed Virgin Mary in Šiluva, the site of the 1608 Marian apparition (BNS, 2001). Bearing in mind that some Christians do not recognize the cult of Mary, let alone that there are other religious traditions present in the country, this symbolic act forms the basis for discussions about the role of Catholicism in contemporary Lithuanian society and state; at the same time, it raises questions about how minority religions are located in the wider field of religion. According to social research data, one out of every five Lithuanians does not identify with the Roman Catholic Church. Examining the life of minority religions in the shadow of a Catholic majority from a sociological perspective reveals not only how minorities live but also what social norms are established and how the majority of society adheres to them. In a 2007 representative survey, Lithuanians were asked for the first time about public attitudes toward minority religions not included in the list of traditional religions provided by the 1995 Law on Religious Communities and Associations of the Republic of Lithuania. The survey results showed that a very small part of the Lithuanian public had interacted with the representatives of minority religions, and most evaluated these groups negatively. A comparison of the data from the 2007 and 2014 surveys showed that the most negatively evaluated minority religions included: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Word of Faith, Mormons, Krishna Consciousness Organization, and Evangelical Baptists (Ališauskienė and Bučaitė-Vilkė 2014). These specific minority religions have a nuanced history in, and relations with, the Lithuanian state and society. Their expression in public differs; some, such as the organization of Krishna Consciousness, are more often seen in public places. Others, such as the Evangelical Baptists, are rarely seen in the public sphere. It was the appearance of Evangelical Baptists on the list of the most disliked minority religions in Lithuania that raised the most questions. How to explain why Evangelical Baptists received such negative evaluations from Lithuanian society? Informal conversations with members of various minority religions while discussing the results of the population surveys pointed in the direction of searching for an answer in the Soviet era, and it seemed appropriate to assess the contemporary situation of minority religions using a socio-historical perspective. This links processes of the marginalization and stigmatization of minority religions taking place in contemporary Lithuanian society with (possible) historically transmitted images of minority religions, which persist despite ongoing socio-political transformations that are changing states, religious organizations, and individual lives.[...]
Recenzentai: dr. Regina Laukaitytė (Lietuvos istorijos institutas); prof. dr. Egdūnas Račius (Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas); doc. dr. Rūta Žiliukaitė (Vilniaus universitetas)