%0 Journal Article
%T Religious Heritage in Anthropological Studies: Between Secular Perspective and Lived Religion
%A Baraniecka-Olszewska, Kamila
%J Studia Religiologica
%V 2023
%N Volume 56 Issue 2

%K religious heritage, secular gaze, religious heritage complex, lived religion, Poland
%@ 0137-2432
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/studia-religiologica/article/dziedzictwo-religijne-w-badaniach-antropologicznych-miedzy-perspektywa-swiecka-a-religia-przezywana
%X The article discusses academic approaches towards religious heritage. Drawing on the experience of ethnographic research in Poland, I suggest that analysis based on a relation: sacralisation of heritage – heritagisation of religion does not exhaust interpretive perspectives on the described phenomenon, as it locates it exclusively on the secular plane. Deriving from the notions of “religious heritage complex” and “adjacency”, I demonstrate that relations between heritage and religion, but also secular gaze and religious practice are complex and require theoretical tools going beyond presenting religious heritage in terms of the secular sacred. I bring the Polish context into the debate, emphasising that the dominance of the Roman Catholicism in the public sphere and the role of the Church in building heritage requires critical interpretive tools embracing religion’s impact on heritage-making process and simultaneously, the place heritage takes in lived religion.