Humanist marriage ceremonies in Poland: re-enchantment and four social constructions of the sacred

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article is based on empirical research on humanist (individualized and mostly secular) weddings conducted in Poland between the years 2016 and 2020. As an emerging new form of civic rituality, humanist marriage ceremonies affect the ritual landscape of Poland, and by doing so they change the status quo. One can perceive their appearance as a sign of secularization and detachment from the institutionalized religion of the dominant Catholic Church, but also other religious transformations encompassed by the term of re-enchantment, such as the emergence of less formalized, alternative spiritualities, and changes in the field of institutionalized religion, namely its privatization. In my analysis, I go beyond such binaries as religious/secular, sacred/profane, sacred/secular and demonstrate that humanist wedding ceremonies deploy four different kinds of the sacred (the character of these categories is analytical rather than substantial): religious-sacred; nonreligious-sacred; spiritual-sacred and secular-sacred.