Abstract
Since 1995, Surveys on antisemitism using national representative samples have been regularly carried out in Hungary. In this article, we used data from the 2011 and 2017 surveys to explore the relationship between three types of antisemitism, namely religious, secular, and emotional. Moreover, we scrutinized how different religiosity indicators can be used as explanatory variables for the different types of antisemitism. We found a slight increase in religious and secular antisemitism between 2011 and 2017, while emotional antisemitism remained almost the same. Religious anti-Judaism significantly correlated with both secular and emotional antisemitism, however, its relationship was much stronger with the former. When analyzing the relationship between different types of antisemitism and religiosity indicators, we found that while in 2011, all the indicators were connected to religious, and most of them to secular and emotional antisemitism, in 2017, only the variables measuring subjective self-classification remained significant. The results show that the relationship between religion and antisemitism underwent some substantial changes between 2011 and 2017. While in 2011, personal religiosity was a significant predictor of the strength of antisemitism, in 2017, religion serving as a cultural identity marker took over this function. The hypothetical explanatory factor for the change is the rebirth of the “Christian-national” idea appearing as the foundational element of the new Hungarian constitution, according to which Christian culture is the ultimate unifying force of the nation, giving the inner essence and meaning of the state. In this discourse, being Christian is equated with being Hungarian. Self-declared and self-defined Christian religiosity plays the role of a symbolic marker for accepting the national-conservative identity discourse and belonging to the “Christian-national” cultural-political camp where antisemitic prejudices occur more frequently than in other segments of the society.
Highlights
IntroductionIt is impossible to define the exact number of Jews in Hungary
In Hungary, surveys on antisemitism carried out regularly since 1995 show that—often contrary to the perceptions of observers—the share of antisemites among the adult Hungarian population barely changed between 1995 and 2006.1 The percentage of antisemites among the Hungarian population wasIt is impossible to define the exact number of Jews in Hungary
In the United States, several surveys demonstrated that religious attitudes could partly explain the acceptance of secular antisemitic views. The connection between these two sets of attitudes was already explored in the seminal research on authoritarianism of Adorno and his colleagues (Adorno et al 1969, pp. 208–21). They investigated the correlation between antisemitism/ethnocentrism and religious affiliation, the parents’ religious affiliation, church attendance, the importance of religion and church to the subjects and certain fundamentalist religious beliefs, and they found that “gross, objective factors—denomination and frequency of church attendance—were less significant for prejudice than certain psychological trends reflected in the way the subject accepted or rejected religion and in the content of his religious ideology” (Adorno et al 1969, p. 221)
Summary
It is impossible to define the exact number of Jews in Hungary. Based on demographic data the estimation for the number of halachically Jewish persons (e.g., having Jewish mother) in Hungary was between 58,936 and 110,679 in 2015. That is 0.6% and 1.1% of the total population, respectively. Based on this data and the proportion of intermarriages, in 2015 approximately minimum 73,000 and maximum 138,000 persons had at least one Jewish parent, which corresponds to 0.7 and. There are three major Christian denomination in Hungary: the Catholic, the Reformed, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church. According to the census in 2011, 54% of those answering the question declared themselves as Catholic, 16 as Reformed, and 3% as Evangelical Lutheran
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