Agata Rejowska, Jagiellonian University
Keywords: humanism, marriage, weddings, Poland, sacred, secular
Humanist marriage ceremonies are an emerging form of civic rituality in Poland, and their popularity is on the rise. The first official humanist marriage ceremony was conducted in 2007 by the Polish Rationalist Association. As advocates of this type of rituality argued, this is an alternative to both religious and civil marriage ceremonies. The latter, although secular, meaning in theory suitable for non-religious couples, are often perceived as formulaic, bureaucratic, and devoid of meaning. I conducted empirical research on humanist weddings conducted in Poland between the years 2016 and 2020. As my study shows, as a hybrid phenomenon, humanist marriage ceremonies elude such binary divisions as secular/sacred or non-religious/sacred.
The conducted research reveals the various motivations of couples who decide on such form of celebration. In addition to ‘nonreligious’ or ‘antireligious’ motivation, there are also ‘anti-institutional’, ‘individualistic’, and ‘practical’ motives. It also shows that even if some couples decided on humanist marriage ceremony, that did not necessarily mean that they were deeply steeped in rationalism and materialism. In Europe, the majority of non-religious individuals believe in a ‘spirit or life force’ rather than embracing hard atheism and a rationalist-materialist viewpoint. In the same vein, for some of my research participants, spiritual or religious frameworks were still the important points of reference in their marriage ceremonies.
But even when they did not refer to spiritual and religious outlooks, the ceremonies remained sacred despite being secular/non-religious. By ‘sacred’ I mean something that ‘people take to be absolute realities that have claims over their lives’ (Lynch 2012, 15). Sacred is not an exclusively religious category, although for a long time it has been reduced to this field. Also, it does not have any actually existing ‘ontological referent’ but it is a social construction. For this reason, people can experience ‘the sacred’ as very diverse social phenomena.
For instance, love and intimacy are feelings that are often experienced as sacred. This is often expressed through terms such as ‘my one and only’ or ‘soulmate’. Sometimes the romantic narrative presents a meeting of two people as an effect of ‘destined coincidences’. The opposition between destiny and coincidence was a subject of reflection at one of the weddings I observed, during the groom’s speech:
I have the impression that you could easily divide people into those who believe in coincidence and those who think there are no coincidences and everything happens for a reason. I belonged to the first group until the ski camp [where the couple met]. And 15 minutes in the bus was enough (…). And then for the first time in my life I felt really calm, an emotion I didn’t know before came over me and I felt somehow looked after by the energy of the world, and since then I think that everything happens for a reason. You are definitely here for a reason.
Sacred is something that needs to be ‘set apart’ and protected from ‘any profanation’ and, by the same logic, the loved person is set apart from other women or men and the relationship is something that needs to be protected (for instance being unfaithful could profane it). Relationship can be symbolically polluted by the interference of the external institutions that represent irrelevant and rejected values, and are ‘inauthentic’. For this reason one of the research participants, Harry[1], did not want to have a religious ceremony:
It was kind of conflicting to have something that really meant a lot to me, which was my love for my wife, with something that meant nothing to me, which is a belief in God. That means zero to me. So, I didn’t want to mix those two things.
Although advocates of humanist marriage ceremonies consider these rites of passage to be the alternative not only to religious but also to civil marriages (similarly in the UK), in Poland the civil ceremony is still the only legally recognized option for non-religious couples who do not want to be married within any institutionalized religious tradition. Hence, because humanist marriages in Poland do not have legal recognition, contrary to other countries like Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Scotland, and some parts of the United States (Kasselstrand, 2018), if couples wish to have a legally valid wedding, an additional civil ceremony is required (usually a modest ceremony at the registry office is held on another day).
The interviewees often complained that civil marriage ceremonies are impersonal and generic. Couples usually associate civil ceremonies not only with something cheesy and anachronistic, but also emotionless and mundane. As Norbert, one of the interviewees, put it: ‘a woman plays some “da-da-da-daa” [imitates Mendelsson’s Wedding March] on a tape recorder and there’s nothing sublime about it and you don’t feel any emotions either’. According to participants, civil marriage ceremonies deploy ossified symbols and meanings that have lost their power. It is either ‘funny’ or grotesque in its seriousness. The civil ceremony represents the secular-profane; it belongs to the mundane, emotionally uncharged everyday life. Many couples I spoke to treated it rather as a ‘necessary evil’ and something grotesque in its ‘seriousness’. Dominika laughed as she described how, when the official told them that ‘the mayor of the district joins in sending wishes’, they were not able to treat it seriously, especially as this was a random district with which they had no attachment.
In the background of humanist marriage ceremonies there is a belief in universal moral order, common values, immanent interconnectedness between people and a universal foundation of humankind. These shared beliefs are another source of potential sacralization. As Helena said: ‘We have something in common because we are human beings. And those values are important to all of us. Like love, relationships, happiness, and things like that’. The equation of humanism with something that is universal often triggered comparisons and allusions to religion (as something particularistic). During the research, I often encountered the narrative that humanist values are something that unify people, while belonging to a particular religion constitutes a dividing factor. In this sense, humanism in general and humanist rites of passage in particular are perceived as the means that help people to function despite or above the already existing divisions and to avoid generating new ones. As Harry put it:
I think it’s important to recognize that there is a way of being spiritual amongst people without being attached to a religion. (…) We have to find a way, or start to find ways to love one another and to be with one another, without turning to any mainstream religious beliefs (…). So I think that’s what humanistic means to me.
This narrative alludes to the understanding of humanism as an ethical project, striving to build a democratic and open society, and humanist ceremonies are one of its tools. This is relevant especially in Poland, as sociologists note that Poles lack identities other than the religious Polak-katolik one. This lack of other identities means a deficit of ritual alternatives to Catholic rites of passage, which are an important tool for the institutional Church to maintain its power in Poland. Humanist rites of passage, therefore, can be a tool for forging an alternative identity to the Polak-katolik one.
Humanist ceremonies are a sign of the secularization of the ritual sphere, yet do not indicate its desacralization. Participants expressed a rejection of impersonal and formulaic civil ceremonies, but also a need to saturate the marriage rite with meanings that are perceived as contemporary and relevant. Although secularization undermines the authority of institutional religions, secularized social life is not devoid of the sacred. However, secularization also affects ‘the sacred’ and its manifestations, including marriage ceremonies, as its form is flexible and adjusts to the changes taking place throughout society.
Agata Rejowska is an assistant professor at the Institute of Sociology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In 2021 she was a Visiting Assistant in Research at Yale University, Center for Cultural Sociology. In 2023 she received the Best Early Career Article Award granted by the International Society for the Sociology of Religion for the article “Humanist Weddings in Poland: The Various Motivations of Couples” published in Sociology of Religion. From 2024 she has been a member of the research group for the project “Practices of Secularity in Catholic Poland: Forming a New Social Order?” (led by Professor Katarzyna Zielińska).
References
[1] The names of all participants have been replaced by pseudonyms.
Kasselstrand I (2018) ‘We Still Wanted That Sense of Occasion’: Traditions and Meaning Making in Scottish Humanist Marriage Ceremonies. Scottish Affairs 27: 273-293.
Lynch G (2012) The Sacred in the Modern World: A Cultural Sociological Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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