ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the exuberant, Sanctum-inspired rediscovery of religion in the Polish intellectual renaissance between 1976 and 1989. The importance of the “Christian turn” in this renaissance has been hitherto occluded both from the studies of Solidarnosc and from the discussions of the role of Catholic religion in communist Poland. The chapter argues that studying the relationship between Catholicism and Solidarnosc remains incomplete without attending to sophisticated forms of religiosity and religious reflection which emerged in the 1970s. It suggests that the religious resurgence among the intellectual and theological elites had a genuine impact both on the ways in which the community of conscience thought and functioned, and on the making of the first Solidarnosc. The chapter explores an extraordinary turn towards the Christian Sanctum in the 1970s which contributed to forging anti-authoritarian thought and practice in Poland.
