Religious rites of passage among adolescents in 2009–2020. A sociological perspective

Abstract

The article discusses an issue to which researchers of religious phenomena attach considerable importance, namely the attitude of young people to religious rites of passage. Practices such as baptism, first communion, confirmation, church marriage and funeral only occur once in a lifetime and allow new patterns of behavior to be assigned to individuals within a religious group. Stronger identification with faith, and consistent participation in observances in particular, promote a higher appreciation of their importance. With the hindsight of a decade, one notices a distanced attitude of high school graduates from the Świętokrzyskie region towards rituals that constitute their previous or anticipated experience (especially confirmation, and, to a lesser extent, communion or church wedding). This mainly concerns the religious significance of the rites, while the functions related to integration, tradition, ludicity and self-presentation seem relatively stable, also in the case of non-practitioners. The question of the role of contemporary socialization agendas with respect to transmission of religious culture remains open.