Leader Cults and Secularized Faiths:
Religiosity, the Choice of Values and Political Preferences in Hungary
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Pázmány Péter Catholic University Faculty of Social
Sciences (Budapest).
Submission date: 2021-01-07
Acceptance date: 2021-03-29
Publication date: 2021-09-20
Polish Sociological Review 2021;215(3):311-330
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ABSTRACT
This paper explores the extent to which religiosity entails special choices of values, the differences
between the values of religious and non-religious people and whether there are significant dissimilarities in the
ways they relate to politics in Hungary. The results derived from our representative sample have shown the dual
nature of the value orientations of people who consider themselves religious. The attitude of religious people is
characterized by a duality of leader cult and secularised belief. Predominantly religious people hold secularized
values, but their personal life worlds reflect an inherited traditionalism concerning their viewpoint on their political
leader. Consequently, they have a positive attitude towards governmental measures which result in restrictions on
constitutional and parliamentary government, as well as on the Western system of democratic institutions, while
at the same time they are drifting away from their Christian values.