Religious-secular as non-competitive: Encouraging participative church in a Czech Catholic diocese

• Published in: Social compass Vol. 71; no. 2; pp. 365 - 386
• Main Authors: SPALOVÁ, Barbora, PELIKÁN, Vojtěch, LIŠKA, Marek
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.06.2024; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Applied research; Catholics; Differentiation; Transformation; recherche participative; religious; Czech Republic; séculier; secular; participative research; Catholic Church; Église catholique; République tchèque; Christianity; Christianisme; religieux
• ISSN: 0037-7686; 1461-7404
• DOI: 10.1177/00377686241241017

The presented text builds upon 4 years of applied research intended to support the transformation of a Czech Catholic diocese into a more participative organisation, internally and externally. This process allowed us to see different positions in the relationship between the religious and the secular within the highly secularised Czech Republic. In some places, the religious and the secular appeared incompatible. Elsewhere they influenced each other and intermingled. And still, in other places, the religious escaped horizontal opposition to the secular and differentiated itself vertically as a transcendental other. In all cases, it was evident that we cannot consider the religious and the secular as categories which define mutually competitive worlds. This definitional opposition is disappearing, and the terms are losing clarity as well as the capacity to organise the lives of Western subjects. We suggest using Dalferth’s differentiation of R-secularity and D-secularity as a tool to gasp this shift.