The Polish-Belarusian border in the sense of religious and cultural security in the 21st century

Abstract

The article contains a report on research conducted on the Polish-Belarusian border in 2018, the aim of which was to identify the sense of religious security of the inhabitants of this region. The basic thesis is that the sense of religious security is related to formal belonging to a religious minority and individual experiences, which can be understood not only as personal experiences, but also as family ones, experienced in the past and passed down from generation to generation. It was assumed that religious identity and formal declaration of religion are part of broader cultural awareness, but do not determine the attitude towards the state. The article attempts to systematize the key concepts of security: religious, denominational and cultural. A characterization of a borderland person was made – that is, a person living at the crossroads of cultures - and the research results were discussed.