Religion on Catholic Internet Forums in Poland. A Memory Mediated
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.71294/ers.2020.08Keywords:
religion, internet, memory, forums, CatholicismAbstract
The following article aims to show that on Catholic Internet forums in Poland, religion—in this case Roman Catholicism—serves as a mediated chain of memory fulfilling two main functions simultaneously: an integrating function and a differentiating function. The analysis will be based on Hervieu-Léger’s concept of religion as a chain of memory (Hervieu-Léger, 2000, 2006) and Davie’s modified concept of religion as memory that mutates (Davie, 2000, 2006). A thread from 2011 on one of the most popular Catholic forums in Poland—forum.wiara.pl—will be used as a case study. It will be shown that through voicing various notions of the meaning of religion, faith, the institutional Church, and the connection between science and religion, users both distinguish themselves from and integrate themselves with other users, as well as with their representation of ‘average’ Catholics in Poland.
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