Life in Religious Pluralism: The Religious Situation in the Polish-Ukrainian Borderland Area

Abstract

The Polish-Ukrainian borderland is a place where three religious denominations meet. The relationships between these different religions have a long history there and they were the basis on which the process of the shaping of national consciousness began and on which Polish-Ukrainian national relations were formed in the second half of the nineteenth century in that area. I The coexistence of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches in that borderland already had a very complicated and turbulent history before the rise of the Greek Catholic Church, which included features of both denominations and was itself a result of these interactions. Now, in the 1990s, all three denominations are perhaps playing a more important role in that region than ever before. This paper is based on research done in the region between 1994 and 1996 by Grzegorz Babinski. Although the contemporary Polish-Ukrainian borderland had an earlier common history, for the last 50 years it has been divided between Poland and Ukraine, and the two parts have functioned in two different socio-economic orders. After a brief introduction it is therefore necessary to describe them separately.