c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

COLOGNE _ There is something of a religious revival in the former socialist countries in Central Europe.

Based on two sets of surveys of the International Social Survey Program, one in 1991 and one in 1998, my colleague Wolfgang Jagodzinski and I have found an upturn in”spirituality”in Hungary, Slovenia and East Germany, particularly among those born in the 1970s.

In the 1991 surveys there were hints of this revival. The rather small number of respondents born in the ’70s at that time, for example, were significantly more likely to believe in life after death. In fact, in all three countries this belief violated the usual sociological law that people become more religious as they grow older. Rather there was a”U”curve with the older and the younger respondents _ grandparents and grandchildren _ more likely to believe in human survival after death than the middle-aged respondents.

In 1998, the upswing among the 1970s cohorts was confirmed. Moreover, a broader indicator that measured belief in life after death, miracles, heaven and well as frequency of prayer, also indicated a dramatic increase among the ’70s group and an increase in the rest of the population of all three countries.

We called this indicator”spirituality”because it represents religion without the churches. Weekly church attendance has not increased in any of the countries. Furthermore, confidence in church leadership has decreased and opposition to the power of the churches has increased. Religion has become more important _ indeed, made dramatic gains _ in the former socialist countries, but the churches do not seem to have benefited.

Some of our colleagues have suggested this”revival”is the result of the increasing influence of”new age”or”new”religious sects. In fact there is no evidence either influence is important.

Two Polish scholars _ Elena Borowick and Gregory Gabinski _ have collected essays about the response of Catholic and Orthodox churches to the collapse of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe. The essays make melancholy reading.

The churches seem to have three goals _ the restoration of their political power, the re-enforcement of their religious monopoly, and greater control of the moral life of their laity.

While they have been more successful in these efforts in some countries than in others, in general they have not been able to restore the pre-1940s status quo. Nonetheless, they have not stopped trying.

In the three countries we have studied, religious leadership is not held in high esteem. Sadly, that leadership has not been able to respond successfully to the newly felt religious needs of their people or even to be aware of them.

The three countries have hardly become vigorously religious. In East Germany, for example, two out of five reject all possibility there might either be a God or life after death. Yet 29 percent of East German atheists believe in religious miracles. One wonders, therefore, who is the God in whom they do not believe and what is the transcendent power that is responsible in their minds for religious miracles.

Hungary and Slovenia, while hardly profoundly religious countries, are nonetheless approaching religious parity with England and the Netherlands.

The great communist attempt to crush religion as”the opiate of the people”has failed. The confident prediction of some sociological theorists that socialism would complete the”secularization”of Europe has been refuted.

The question remains, however, of whether the churches will be able to respond to the reawakened or rediscovered religious needs of their people.

In East Germany only 5 percent of the population is Catholic. However, Hungary and Slovenia are overwhelmingly Catholic countries. There is at the present time no clear evidence the church in either country has the flexibility, the creativity or the energy to respond to or even discover the possibilities of the present religious situation.

As a priest recently remarked to me in Rome, intellectual life is dead in the church, and with it the skills to take advantage of a changing religious situation.

There are many reasons for this ennui _ repression, exhaustion, disillusion. Will the church meet the challenge of the current spirituality revival in Eastern and Central Europe? Almost certainly.

DEA END GREELEY