Postyczniowe spojrzenia na chrześcijaństwo: pozytywiści, Sienkiewicz, Gloger

Abstract

The author compares two attitudes towards Christianity: that of the young Warsaw intelligentsia focused around the progressive magazine „Weekly Review” and the writer and Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz. The Warsaw positivists, seeking to modernise Polish culture after the defeat of the January Uprising, advocated also the idea of modernising Christianity, adapting it to the conditions of the contemporary world, which was characterised by the rapid progress of civilisation, creating entirely new ethical problems (the approach to the poor and the exploited classes, colonialism, the rationalisation of culture). At the same time, the writers of this circle often presented freethinking, agnostic or atheistic attitudes. In turn, Sienkiewicz, as the author of Quo Vadis, was considered almost an apologist for Christianity. At the same time, a careful reading of his works reveal the constant presence of a thread of religious scepticism (the novel Without Dogma, his epistolography). In a closer look, both the positivists and Sienkiewicz are characterised by a far-reaching complexity of attitudes, although the author of the Trilogy follows a clear preference for Christianity as part of the Polish national tradition.