Salvation in Nation Cover Image

Soteriologia zbiorowa. Uwagi o procesie kształtowania się narodowych idei zbawienia
Salvation in Nation

Author(s): Andrzej Sepkowski
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, History, Philosophy, Social Sciences
Published by: Uniwersytet Jana Długosza w Częstochowie
Keywords: soteriology;collective;nation;salvation;idea

Summary/Abstract: Every functioning nation – R.W. Wiliams points out– has to an important degree a common religion. The possession of a common set of ideas, rituals and symbols can supply an overarching sense of unity even in a society riddled with conflicts. Nation exists through a process of transmission quite as much as bio-logical life. The transmission occurs by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking and feeling from the older to the younger. Without this commu-nication of ideals, hopes, expectations, opinions from these members of national society who are passing out of the group life to those who are coming into it, so-cial life could not survive. The search for salvation is an obviously important component of the quest. For many people in this essentially individualisticculture, it is a preoccupation that virtually eclipses the idea of social justice,the other central dimension of the search. At the very least, the pursuit of salvationoffers a point of entry. Defini-tions of salvation are diverse and often incopmatible. In every national religion everyone had a right to pass through the zone of abundance, and in time, it was thought, ebveryone would. As the goal of general abundance was approached the major social problems of discrimination, poverty, unemployment, divisive mate-rial inequalities and environmental stress would become manageable. Some people might define abundance itself as the promised land: others might move on from material satiety to new psychological and spiritual frontiers. Thinking about national, Polish salvation author tried to find some new questions about the national identity

  • Issue Year: 3/2009
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 33-56
  • Page Count: 24
  • Language: Polish