Three decades of the Polish psychology of religion (1989–2020)

Abstract

Poland, being a post-Communist European country with a tradition of Marxists religious studies in operation till 1989, developed during the Communist Era an original way of connecting psychology of religion with the value-neutral study of religion. It is also a Catholic a country, in which psychology of religion was practiced in a bipolar milieu: religion as a “sensitive” topic was approached from either Marxist-atheist or Catholic religious perspective. Such dualistic divisions should end with the breaking of the Iron Curtain, and opening to the West, but was it so in this country of contrasts? The article forms a bird’s eye look on the last three decades of the Polish psychology of religion (1989–2020), concentrating on the “concrete products of scientific inquiry” therefore main works of scholars in the field are presented, discussed and context-wise interpreted in order to provide some answers for that query.