Religijność jako czynnik stylu życia

Abstrakt

The present paper outlines the conception of the analysis of religiousness as a factor of the life style. Many problems are discussed here among which one can mention various cultural and historical conditionings of the influence of religiousness on the life style, the question of legitimization of the values and religious behaviour as well as ,the role of the "significant other" as a person or group which in turn models the form and content of religiousness. The latter makes the question of the structural and creative function of the life style possible because of the religious aspect in it.

Taking religiousness as a factor of the life style and treating it as a graduated feature, one can assume that, on the one hand, we are going to deal with a more profound religiousness characterized by some characteristics which lie beyond the scope of the capacities of sociological research. Though on the basis of some indices also within the scope of sociological analysis one can construe this type of religiousness. The religious values will then make the structural and creative principle of the life style, and will create the type of "religious man". This means that they influence the general life activity of man, and the religious doctrine legitimizes also those activities which run within the secularized areas of social reality. On the other hand, there is an ornamental religiousness, external only, which is subject to the pressure of the conditions of time and space, essentially opportunistic, i.e. the one that is based on the "recognized" but not "felt" values. It is the life style in which religious behaviours are motivated by the external only recognition of values, with the
lack of internal commitment or at least indifference towards them. The ornamental religiousness, in line with our meaning, is a boundary point of a continuum of orientations in values and patterns of those activities which lead to a complete secularization in the secularized world.

Both the more profound and the ornamental religiousness create frameworks within which there is a whole range of various in form and content forms of religiousness which forms create the right life style or are present in it in a less conspicuous way.