Youth and religion in Hungary

Abstract

The notion that young people have become more interested in religious faith and in religious matters in general has gained ground amongst public and scholars alike. I Their opinions bolstered by sociological indicators, church policy-makers 2 and leaders of youth organisations 3 agree that this is the case. Hard empirical facts, however, are rather scanty. Social scientists have not yet investigated several aspects of attitudes towards religion. Whatever data we have, may, therefore, serve only as a starting point far from giving satisfactory answers to the question. The lack of proven facts coupled with the importance of this issue has induced the Public Opinion Research Group attached to the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League to set up an independent investigation into the phenomenon. The basic questions of this inquiry are: 1. What aspects or elements of religion play any part in the life of young people, and what are the manifestations of these? 2. What differences can be discovered among young people of various social groupings in their attitudes to religious matters? Religious feeelings, and attitudes towards religion, are very complex ind~ed. Our inquiry over and above factors of background and environment concentrated attention on the following: interest in religion; knowledge of religious matters; beliefs; religious -practices; religion and ideology; religious stereotypes. An investigation of relationships between various dimensions of religious feeling and the