Anxiety of Modern Man, Religion, and The Central European Experience [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 121-128]

ANXIETY OF MODERN MAN
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Most likely the earlier experience of the USSR speeded up the change
in the satellite nations. The organizational arrangements dating from this
second phase-the administration of the churches by a central State Office
for the Affairs of the Churches, the status of the clergy as the employees
of the State, etc.-has survived with some minor changes until the present
day.
The Specific Central European Experience
The struggle itself of the communist system with religion, however,
has passed through several stages since then. Time and again, more sophisticated methods were adopted, but since these did not produce any better
results, and did not bring the expected demise of religion any nearer, the
communist regimes at regular intervals returned to anti-religious drives
by "administrative" means, that is by outright persecution of the believers.
It can be said, on the whole, that while the practice of religion has significantly diminished in Central Europe under communist rule, it has not
diminished more significantly than in the countries of the European West.
The "hard core" of the faithful, however, is much more determined to
persevere in its beliefs and visibly more prepared to bear the inevitable costs
than its counterpart in the pluralistic polities of the European continent.
This would indicate that the appreciable ebb of "religiosity" since the end
of World War II may have been a general phenomenon, a symptom of
advancing modernization rather than the effect of the anti-religious campaigns engaged in by the communists. On the contrary, it is likely that we
would find less religious fervor in Central Europe today had the regimes
there not mounted a systematic attack against religion.
It would seem, too, that the communist rulers in contemporary Central
Europe have not been aware of the true causes of what they call "recrudescence of religiosity," a trend observable everywhere in the world and obviously connected with the spiritual crisis of modem man. One of these causes
is related to the disorientation and anxiety growing from the impersonal
nature of human contacts and the loss of control by the individual over his
or her own life. The source of this depersonalization is modem bureaucracy,
and since bureaucratization has progressed far more rapidly and reached
many more areas of human life in the communist societies than in the noncommunist ones, it appears only natural that the anxiety and the search
for new orientations and meaning of life should exhibit greater intensity
there than in the Western world. The power holders in these societies
apparently do not realize this, although they are clearly puzzled by what
they see.
The recurrent theme of the need for "a dialogue with the Christians"-a
concern which has been shown especially by the communist ideologists