‘System of collective representations’ in humanist marriage ceremonies in Poland

Abstract

In Poland we observe that humanist (strongly individualized and mostly secular) marriages are growing in number. This article focuses mainly on the analysis of one of the elements of performance in humanist wedding ceremonies indicated by Jeffrey Alexander, which is ‘system of collective representations’. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first describes the theoretical framework, beginning with an outline of the Polish context with the main focus on the role of religion. Then it addresses the category of social performance by Alexander, and the broader theoretical contexts in which humanist marriage ceremonies can be inscribed (individualisation, transformations of contemporary love, changes in religiosity). In the second part this theoretical framework is applied to the gathered empirical material. The article concludes with the statement that the creation of new ceremonies leads to some transpositions into a wider system of meanings and attempts to describe these changes.

Introduction

In Poland we observe that humanist (strongly individualised and mostly secular) rites of passage are growing in number. ¹ The most numerous group of humanist ceremonies in Poland consists of weddings. According to their propagators, they are the alternative not only for religious but also for civil marriages (which, by the proponents of humanist marriages, are deemed as ‘devoid of ideological content’ and ‘template’).

This article focuses on the analysis of one of the elements of performance in humanist rites of passage indicated by Jeffrey Alexander, which is ‘system of collective representations’, understood as ‘background symbols’ (‘the deep background for performance’), and ‘foreground symbols’ (‘the scripts that are the immediate referent for action’). According to Alexander (2006: 33), systems ² of collective representations ‘range from “time immemorial” myths to invented traditions . . . from oral traditions to scripts prepared by . . . specialists’ in the case of analysed performances, by celebrants. This article aims to analyse the meanings present in ‘the deep background for performance’, as well as in ‘the foreground scripts’, and is based on qualitative content analysis of scripts from humanist ceremonies and materials from workshops for humanist celebrants. The analysed data comes also from semi-structured interviews with celebrants (who create or help to create such scripts).

Since the end of the twentieth century, sociology and anthropology of religion have put at the centre of their research the numerous changes in traditional forms of religiosity. This analysis of humanist marriage ceremonies in Poland will therefore contribute to the development of these scientific fields. The Polish context is especially interesting, taking into account the fact that sociologists of religion have noticed that in Poland ‘a ritual does not require faith’ (Borowik, 2001: 140), and that religious practices are for Poles an important element of identification. What is more, as stated by Nicholas J. Demerath III (2000), Catholicism in Poland acts as a ‘cultural religion’. The idea of ‘cultural religion’ can also be associated with Danièle Hervieu-Léger’s (2000) concept of religion as a ‘chain of memory’. Tradition and collective memory are seen in this concept as more important aspects of religion than a particular set of beliefs, so that in this case people ‘belong without believing’, rather than ‘believe without belonging’ (Hervieu-Léger, 2006). Taking all this into consideration, the appearance of an alternative to Catholic marriage ceremonies in Polish contexts is particularly significant and could be treated as a testimony to the secularisation of the ritual sphere (Tyrała, 2009). Although in Poland these kinds of rites may be deemed as ‘peripheral’, those fragments of social reality could also say something about the ‘centre’ itself: a study of humanist marriages could reveal meanings hidden not only behind ‘humanism’, but also behind Catholicism as a cultural religion in Poland.

Setting the scene: Religion in Polish society

In 2018, around 193 thousand marriages were recorded in Poland. Among them 62.3 per cent were religious ones (in 2000 it was almost 72 per cent). In general, the vast majority of religious marriages in Poland are held in the Catholic Church (around 99 per cent). However, there are regions such as Silesia and Western Pomerania and cities including Warsaw, Lodz and Sopot where the number of civil marriages is higher than the number of religious ones (Szukalski, 2018).

The number of humanist weddings in Poland is steadily rising: in 2011, more were performed (40 weddings) than throughout the whole period from 2007 to 2010, when 29 weddings were performed (Tempczyk, 2012). According to estimates of the celebrant from one of the companies that organise humanist weddings, in 2016 the total number of humanist marriage ceremonies carried out in Poland was around 140 (C7_m_Pz). ³ In a conversation that took place in 2018, the celebrant from the same company stated that in comparison to the previous year (2017), they conducted approximately 20 weddings more. Therefore, although there are no doubts that in Poland this phenomenon still remains ‘peripheral’, it is developing dynamically.

Civil marriage ceremonies in Poland are in principle secular, hence they can also act as an alternative for non-believers. However, the proponents of humanist marriages perceived its civil counterpart rather as ‘a contract’ than ‘a ritual’ (Tyrała, 2009). The entire ceremony generally lasts around fifteen minutes. The oath is formalized and stipulated. After the utterance of the official formula, the young couple can add a few words from themselves, but only with prior approval from the official. Due to the fact that the latter represents the state, it is expected that these additional words will be respectful and tactful, therefore, the potential for personalization is limited. However, so far the complementarity of civil and humanist marriage ceremonies is inevitable in Poland (because the latter do not have legal consequences, unlike other countries, for example, the UK or Norway).

As already suggested in the introduction, Catholicism in Poland plays the role of cultural religion ‘by which religion affords a sense of personal identity and continuity with the past’ (Demerath, 2000: 127). Irena Borowik (2001) has noticed that one of the characteristic features of the longevity of Catholicism in Poland is a high level of participation in religious practices. It could be said that Poland, in this context, is a unique case in Europe (also in comparison to other countries where Catholicism dominates, such as Spain or Italy). One-time rites in particular, linked to some key moments in people’s lives, receive special interest.

However, participation in religious practices in Poland is falling steadily. In 2016 for the first time since 1980, only 36.7 per cent of believers took part in Sunday services (Flieger and Wilgocki, 2018). Yet, although Sunday service attendance is getting lower, the religious framework of marriage ceremony is still important, even for Poles who declare that they are not religious. According to the result of a survey carried out by the Public Opinion Research Centre (CBOS), 81 per cent of respondents regard religious marriage ceremonies as ‘important’ (Kowalczuk, 2015). As research conducted by Borowik and Doktór (2001: 128) has shown, the religious setting of weddings is very important for almost 30 per cent of respondents who, at the same time, claimed that they are not religious. Thus, it can be said that the significance of the ‘rite of passage’ is changing considerably more slowly; in 1998 the religious framework of the marriage ceremony was important for 87 per cent of Poles and in 2006 for 84 per cent (Boguszewski, 2006). According to the European Values Study, these numbers are even higher: a religious service for marriage was important for 94.9 per cent of Polish respondents in 1990, and 93.2 per cent in 1999 (Marody and Mandes, 2006).

In Poland, therefore, there can be observed a decline in the significance of institutional religion and an increasing departure from the Church as an institution. However, this process is only partial in its character, because at the same time, adherence to religious rites (especially rites of passage) is still present. It is worth emphasizing that Borowik (2001) links the commitment of Polish society to the ritual with the durability of the model of religiosity of a ‘folk-type’ which is strongly focused on religious practices. This model was constructed during the historical process that has its roots in the period of the Partitions of Poland (1795–1914), when Catholicism started to play the role of a ‘core’ around which political and national values were tangled. During the period of the People’s Republic of Poland (1945–1989), this model was strengthened even more. At the time, religious practices became ‘the element of identification’ for the majority of Poles.

Beyond ritual: Humanist marriage as social performance

So far, humanist rites of passage have been analysed through the prism of the category of ritual. Most of the classical perspectives emphasise that ritual is ‘sequestered’ (Turner, 1977), ‘homeostatic’ (Goody, 1986) and ‘repetitive’ (Rappaport, 1999). According to Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, these features of ritual (formalisation, conventionality) ‘physically distance the participants from the ritual enactment’ (Tambiah, 1979: 123). Ritual as a formalised symbolic activity involves ‘conceptions’ rather than ‘emotions’, it becomes ‘habitual reaction and is used to demonstrate, rather than to relieve, the feelings of individuals’ (Langer, 1951: 123). Numerous classic anthropological studies (Goody, 1986; Evans-Pritchard, 1976; Assmann, 2002) showed also that the ritual ‘stands on guard’ for social order, often protecting the status quo and supporting the current institutional order. On the other hand, most of the latest anthropological works emphasise that ‘performance can work within a society precisely to undermine tradition [in order] to provide a site for the exploration of fresh and alternative structures and patterns of behavior’ (Carlson, 2017: 10). Therefore, for the analysis of such a hybrid phenomenon as humanist marriages, I prefer to add to the analytical category of ‘ritual’, the category of ‘performance’. As my research revealed, humanist marriage ceremonies are strongly individualised and often contain new, alternative contents. The emergence of a secular alternative could be also the manifestation of resistance to hegemony (e.g. the Roman Catholic Church and/or heteronormative culture – a large part of humanist marriages in Poland are concluded by same-sex couples, because of the lack of alternative for homosexual relationships in Poland).

Taking all this into consideration, I suggest that ‘social performance’, which I understand following Alexander (2006: 32) as ‘the social process by which actors, individually or in concert, display for others the meaning of their social situation’, in this context and for my analytical purposes, is perhaps a more appropriate category. However, in line with Bell’s arguments, I treat ‘performance’ rather as a ‘tool for analysis’, than ‘a feature of the object’ (Bell, 2009: 46). As many theorists have highlighted, there is no clear dividing line between ritual and performance: ‘all performance has at its core a ritual action’ (Schechner, 1987) and ‘all ritual has at its core a performative act’ (Alexander, 2006). Thus, ritual and performance co-exist on the same continuum.

According to Alexander, performance is composed of six elements. ⁴ In this article I would like to focus mainly on the first element of performance: ‘system of collective representations’. Alexander describes it as direct and indirect symbolic references that create the foreground and the background for performance. These meanings are often internalized and used not fully consciously. Hence, even when actors try to create a performance from the very beginning, references to some previous conceptions, traditions or particular symbols, are inevitable. Other elements of performance described by Alexander are: actors (the main actor of a humanist marriage is the couple); observers/audience; means of symbolic production (for example, clothing or physical location); mise-en-scène (texts are sequenced temporally and choreographed spatially); and lastly, social power (affects the performance and establishes a boundary for it).

As previously mentioned, my main theoretical framework is Alexander’s theory of social performance, however, the emergence of this alternative to religious marriage ceremonies can be put into the wider context of such social processes as;

1. The development of individualisation. Urlich Beck (1992) associated individualisation with the release of spheres of life from the reign of tradition. Thus, humanist weddings can be deemed as ‘reflective experiments’ and forms of involvement in the construction of living areas which have been freed from the supremacy of tradition.

2. Changes in relation to marriage and love. As observed by Martine Segalen, contemporary couples come into being by a slower ‘step-by-step approach’. Therefore marriage nowadays ‘to a lesser degree sanctifies the “transformation” from one social state to another, from one home to the next’ (Segalen, 2008: 164). The idea of romantic love is more often replaced by the idea of ‘pure relationship’ and ‘confluent love’. The latter ‘jars with the “forever”, “one-and-only” qualities of the romantic love complex’ (Giddens, 1992: 60). ‘Pure relationship’, as Anthony Giddens (1992: 58) described,

   refers to a situation where a social relation is entered into for its own sake, for what can be derived by each person from a sustained association with another, and which is continued only in so far as it is thought by both parties to deliver enough satisfaction for each individual.

3. Changes in religiousness. (a) Privatisation of religion: religious themes create a peculiar ‘patchwork’ and the contemporary individual is looking for the ‘ultimate meanings’ in himself/herself (Luckmann, 1967); (b) The secularisation of consciousness: an increase in the number of people who look on life and the world without the boon of religious interpretation (Berger, 1967), the ‘disenchantment’ of the world and referring to ‘temporal’ instead of ‘supernatural’ authorities (Martin, 1978). There was of course ‘wide-ranging debate about what is meant by secularization’ (Davie and Woodhead, 2009: 524) and I am aware of the different conceptualisations and thematic directions (e.g. re-enchantment or post-secularisation). However, in the case of the ceremonies analyzed in this article, the category of secularization still seems to have explanatory power.

So far researchers have shown that the common feature of humanist marriage ceremonies is anthropocentrism, individualisation and personalisation. However, although humanist weddings are individualised, this individualisation has its limits. This feature of humanist rites was noticed by Guy Cook and Tony Walter (they referred to funerals) and was called by them ‘mass produced individualisation’. They compared the production of the contemporary rite to production of the contemporary car: ‘in each case a production line/computer programme is used to mass produce not a standard product but one individually tailored’ (Cook and Walter, 2005: 374–375).

There is a large community of humanists in Britain, which has been researched by Matthew Engelke. He noticed that humanism in the UK is articulated in relation to the Western, Judeo-Christian tradition. According to Engelke (2014), humanists adopt or adapt Anglican heritage in many ways, especially in terms of the social legacy of Anglicanism. Humanist ceremonies do not function in the historical vacuum, instead drawing inspiration mostly from the Christian tradition (Aston, 2014). Common elements of both humanist and religious ceremonies include the structure, presence of oaths and wedding rings. It seems a similar situation to Britain is taking place in Poland, where Catholicism is both a ‘counterpoint’ and background for humanism.

However, the old forms (such as the conventional structure of the rite of passage) are often replaced by new, alternative contents (love, for example, is declared by phrases such as ‘long-lasting as possible’ and not by ‘until death do us part’). Yet such a dialectical tension between ‘the old’ and ‘the new’ can be seen perhaps in every ritual (Moore and Myerhoff, 1977; Tambiah, 1979). Engelke (2014: 292) explains the presence of elements of Christianity:

secular humanists often want to sever ties with the past . . . with what they understand to be Christianity’s religious elements. At the same time, they want to preserve those aspects of Christianity they understand to be human, not religious.

The existence of humanist marriages in Poland has been documented by sociologist Radosław Tyrała (2009: 5), who claimed somewhat in an exaggerated manner that they constitute ‘a serious alternative to religious rituals’ and are a way by which Polish non-believers can claim their rights. However, research I have conducted reveals ambiguous motivations of people who decide on a humanist marriage. ‘Non-religious’ or ‘anti-religious’ motivation is just one of the possibilities. Humanist marriages can also be a sign of individualisation and changing attitudes to love and marriage, however, all these processes (secularisation, individualisation, transition from romantic toward confluent love) are intertwined.

Research methodology

As mentioned previously, according to Alexander (2006) performance is composed of six elements (systems of collective representations, actors, observers/audience, means of symbolic production, mise-en-scène, social power). In this article I would like to focus on just one: the system of collective representations. Therefore, the article is aimed at the following: the identification of ideas, concepts or ‘myths’ expressed in performance; pointing out ‘traditional’ (religious) and alternative contents present in analysed performances; identification of their meanings and ways of reconceptualisation or interpretation of traditional (religious) elements and analysis of the language of humanist marriages (Is it formal/informal? Are there borrowings from civil or religious counterparts? How do actors code these ‘model representations’?).

The analysed data comes in the majority from the semi-structured interviews (10) with humanist celebrants (who create or help to create scripts), but also from the qualitative content analysis of the humanist ceremonies’ scripts (46) and materials from workshops for humanist celebrants (organised by The Polish Rationalist Association – the main propagator and initiator of the introduction of secular, humanist rites of passage in Poland).

The collected materials were analysed in accordance with a categorisation key which consisted of seven categories:

1. Humanism: How is it understood? What meanings are hidden behind this description?

2. Anthropocentrism: What is the vision and the image of the human like?

3. Individualism and individualisation: If and how is it expressed?

4. Vision of love and marriage: What kind of love is presented in the analysed materials (romantic/confluent)?

5. Cultural texts and their provenience: What kind of texts are presented during a ceremony (secular/religious)? Do they contain references to religious traditions? What is ‘the alternative content’? What kind of text fills the empty spaces after the religious content?

6. Reference point/authority: To what kind of authority or values (temporal/supernatural?) do these texts refer?

7. Oath and its performative power: What kind of expressions are used in the oath? With what kind of phrases is love declared?

Most of the codes were selected through a deduction approach; during analysis I used ‘focused coding’ (Charmaz, 2006: 57–60), in accordance with the categories previously chosen. Such an approach, however, was accompanied by an inductive approach, ‘open coding’ and emergent technique: codes emerged from the analysed texts (Charmaz, 2006: 45).

What does the denotation ‘humanist’ mean?

It seems that humanism should be one of the main ‘background symbols’ and the context for analysed performances. However, celebrants usually do not clarify the way in which they understand ‘humanism’. Very often their explanations resemble a vicious circle which defines idem per idem. So, the ceremony is just human-oriented and ‘humanism’ is a system which has ‘humanist values’ in its centre. However, according to Alexander (2006), such ‘cognitive simplifications’ are an inevitable dramatic technique. They provide condensation and concentration of background meanings. As stated by the Polish Rationalist Association humanism is ‘a system of values which calls a man to individual fulfilment’ (Agnosiewicz, 2007a). Yet, in fact in humanist ceremonies a central role is played by particular individuals, not an abstract human (which is suggested by the word ‘humanist’). Other groups involved in the organisation of humanist marriages have an even more vague definition of humanism: ‘for us it means that it is simply directed at a human, at a couple,. . . Only this’ (C7_m_Pz). They associate it with universal values of mankind like truth and goodness (C5_m_Pz). One of the celebrants even avowed that the denotation ‘humanist’ is a kind of empty signifier. According to him it also ‘sounds good’ and may be associated with something serious: ‘it is often associated with human rights, with some kind of dignity, basic respect, values which are universal for humans, and the religion itself seems to be something particular’ (C5_m_Pz).

According to some celebrants, humanist marriage should express ‘humanist ideas’ (scenario_37). ⁵ Therefore, the central role is played by ‘human life’ and ‘dignity of the individual’, which are of paramount importance as well as the conviction that ‘Of all things the measure is Man’ (scenario_35). Systems of collective representations have various symbolic references to different worlds (social, physical, natural or cosmological; Alexander, 2006). Humanist marriages in Poland refer mainly to the social and natural worlds. They are largely rooted in ‘this’ life and a ‘naturalistic’ temporal frame: ‘We live here and now and strive to make the world a better place’ (scenario_2). An important element is also the belief in humans’ ‘agency’ and the conviction that the future is ‘open’ and ‘malleable’: ‘Humanistic ideas . . . are an expression of the modern conviction that people are able to overcome unexplored borders’ (scenario_43).

Anthropocentrism and the image of the human

As the analysis shows, anthropocentrism is strongly connected with humanism. In these ceremonies we can observe the transition from a focus on God, as the main agent and guarantor of the ceremony, to human. The performances are aimed at affirmation of the individual. According to celebrants, humanist weddings give almost unlimited possibilities of self-expression; creation of this performance may constitute part of the construction of identity (which in late modernity is no longer given or imposed, but mostly individually constructed). The individual becomes the centre of the ceremony, as well as becoming his/her biography, which is given a unique, almost ‘sacred’ status. God ceases to be a ‘foreground symbol’; it is also questionable if symbolic references to him can be found in the ‘deep background’ of performance. The resignation from the religious rite is often justified on the basis that a young couple, not God, should be at the heart of the ceremony. Thus, humanist ceremonies to a greater extent enable the self-expression of the young couple. Often it comes to ‘textualisation’ of the own ‘we’ of newlyweds. Young couples prepare texts in which they describe their meeting and history of their relationship and then, during the wedding ceremony, they present them. The identity of the couple becomes externalised and objectified, for example by visual means – photos of them together and multimedia presentations are often displayed. The rites are deeply rooted in the biographies of individuals. Therefore, it can be said that the ‘system of collective representations’ is ‘shrinking’ or ‘privatising’ and a large part of narrations have an autoreferential character – they are uttered ‘by a young couple’ and they are ‘about that young couple’.

In humanist marriage ceremonies both the change of the reference point (from God to human), but also the change of authority to which it refers can be observed. Humanist marriage vows are taken in the name of affirmed values: ‘On behalf of the community which we represent and values which are dear to us, the act of marriage will commence now’ (scenario_1). This is in contrast to the oath at a Catholic wedding ceremony, where God is actually named as a witness: ‘the bridegroom makes a vow to the bride, who adopts it in the name of God, and the bride makes a vow to the bridegroom who adopts it in the name of God’ (Meissner, n.d.). This can be understood as a secularisation of consciousness and as referring to temporal and ‘this world’ authorities instead of supernatural authorities.

Cultural texts appearing during the ceremony could also indicate the change of authority. Figures associated with humanism are cited (both from Ancient Greece and more contemporary, such as Protagoras or Rousseau), as well as contemporary literature and poetry (among others E. E. Cummings, Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński, Sarah Kane, Kurt Vonnegut). However, references to stars of popular culture are also emerging – Freddie Mercury for example, or fictitious characters such as Winnie the Pooh.

Humanist weddings in general are individualised; however, this ‘individualisation’ has its own limits and ‘mass produced individualisation’, mentioned by Cook and Walter (2005), is visible also in humanist ceremonies in Poland. Usually, despite the common belief that couples can do ‘whatever they want’ at a humanist wedding, celebrants offer a limited spectrum of possibilities to celebrate the entire event. For example, in the course of a wedding, the bride and groom can plant a tree, mix sand/soil from their homelands or light a candle from which the other guests light their own small candles.

The idea of love

Collective representations also express a certain vision of love because of the nature of the celebration (marriage as the rite of passage aimed to unite two independent people) and the conviction that marriage is a consequence of love.

The pattern of ‘romantic love’ is a framework for the majority of oaths. An example could be this poem composed and read out by a bride (I cite only a fragment). In accordance with cultural patterns, it is the woman who waits for the man:

It is not always beautiful and nice,

Life does not always send you a smile

But today I know for sure

It was worth waiting for you (scenario_2).

The Platonic myth about two halves and soulmates, which is a part of the broader complex of romantic love, is also present in the background: ‘Each one of us has a word in their mind: “RECOGNITION”, such a deep conviction, when you know somebody well, but you have not seen each other for a long time’ (scenario_38). The cited fragment comes from the same-sex couple’s wedding, showing that at least some patterns of romantic love can be adjusted to the homosexual context. In accordance to the narration about two halves, every individual is in fact incomplete and is seeking his/her lost ‘part’: ‘The most important meetings take place in the soul, long before the bodies meet’ (workshop text). In line with this kind of narrative, as soon as the other half is found, it comes to recognition and from that moment, the two halves create harmonious togetherness. The other person fills the emptiness which is closely related to the entity’s identity: in a sense a flawed identity achieves fullness (Giddens, 1992). This myth is present in the background of humanist marriage ceremonies, however, more often in a pop-cultural, rather than Platonic version: ‘Let them awaken every morning with joy, that they are waking up by the side of that one and only. Let them always need each other, not to fill the emptiness, but to be full together’ (scenario_4).

However, as analysis of the collected material shows, the idea of romantic love is increasingly more often replaced with the idea of ‘confluent love’ and ‘pure relationship’ (Giddens, 1992). So, marriage vows do not indicate the relationship of a lifetime, but a relationship ‘to the end of love’. In the oath, the affirmation of everyday life is noticeable and the text is more intimate: ‘I promise you, that you will be able to listen to my stories from everyday life, make me morning cups of coffee, carry my heavy bags’ (Agnosiewicz, 2007b). As celebrants stated, the performative ‘I vow’ is increasingly being replaced by ‘I promise’, ‘I swear’ or ‘I will be for you’ (C5_m_Pz, C7_m_Pz), all of which are to an extent less symbolically binding and therefore less powerful (in the sense of performative power). One of the celebrants justifies it as follows: ‘Some young people are afraid of this word, they associate it with the Church, . . . with a more traditional approach’ (C5_m_Pz). In his opinion these expressions can ‘simply be closer to life; “I swear” is not an everyday statement’ (C5_m_Pz). In this way the performative (causative) power (understood in line with the theory of John Austin: saying something - ‘the illocutionary speech act’ – is also doing something, and performative speech acts are used ‘not to report facts, but to influence people’ (Austin, 1962)) is declining. This may indicate that the understanding of marriage and its indissolubility is changing. Celebrants also admitted that they try to speak a less formal language: ‘It is this everyday language and I think it brings them together. They feel that they are really talking to each other, to the person’ (C7_m_Pz). The change of the message code may also be treated as a manifestation of social change.

How are collective representations coded? – Deformalisation

According to Alexander, collective representations are encoded by the actors of performance, and decoded by observers. Therefore I asked questions not only about the performance’s content, but also about the forms, because ‘cultural considerations are integrally implicated in the form that ritual takes’ (Tambiah, 1979: 119). As analysis showed, one of the features of humanist marriage ceremonies is its ‘deformalisation’. At the beginning of the event guests are invited to ‘relax’ (C6_w_Pz). Many weddings begin with the words of the celebrant, which seek to express more clearly the specific, intimate and less ‘official’ character of ceremony. Sometimes, for the purpose of creating a relaxing atmosphere, celebrants make jokes, for example, about older age couples: ‘already not-so-young [couple]’ (scenario_25). Deformalisation is also reflected in the language dimension: ‘We try to speak more freely and less formally’ (C7_w_Pz). ‘Attributes’ which could be associated with formalised and standardised civil marriages are removed (for example, the table for the civil registrar or the national emblem):

we usually come to a place that is already pre-prepared and looks like it separates us from the guests. Usually, there is a large table and we just take it back right away, we stand somewhere closer . . . We try to facilitate interaction with guests . . . It is very rare for a couple to sit with their backs to the guests. . . . And in church, the couple always sits with their backs to the guests (C7_w_Pz).

Mise-en-scène, the dramatic structure and composition, also aims to reflect the intimate character of the ceremony: ‘The bride and the groom look so beautiful, and throughout the whole ceremony, all that is going to be seen are their backs . . . These are such great emotions’ (C6_w_Pz). This calls to mind once again Tambiah (1979) and his statement that ritual as a conventionalised and formalised behavior creates a distance and is emotionally separating.

Deformalisation also takes the form of deinstitutionalisation, which can be manifested for example in the critique of defining marriage as a ‘social institution’, or in the resignation from participation of any ‘institution’ (neither religious, nor state). It is justified by the view that such institutions are not able to capture the essence of ritual. Such anti-institutional attitudes towards marriage means that the relationship is pushed toward the private sphere.

Hidden persistence of religious elements and alternative content

Humanism in Poland is often articulated in relation to Catholicism and its cultural legacy. These references have a dual character. On the one hand, humanist rituals are intended to be the ‘counterpoint’ for their religious counterparts. Hence, the affirmation of values and beliefs (for example freedom or autonomy), which, in the view of humanists, are opposed to religious values. On the other hand, humanist ceremonies function in a given cultural context and draw inspiration mostly from the Christian tradition. Significantly, in one of the conducted interviews, a celebrant called the Christian ritual ‘our’ (however, in other passages she was clearly distant from the religion). She explained that they wanted to break with the Christian tradition, so instead of soil, they throw rose petals on coffins ‘in order to avoid the use of soil which is associated in our Christian ritual with ashes’ (C2_w_Wr). This quotation shows also that symbols are ‘structured by codes that provide analogies and antipathies’ (Alexander, 2006: 33) – something is thrown on the coffin (analogy); however, it is not soil but rose petals (antipathy).

Humanists act, think, and speak in the context of Christianity, which is always a cultural reference point for them. But even if the religious elements are present in such ceremonies, they are often decoded in a secular, not a religious way. Perhaps this is the reason for the popularity of the song ‘Song of Songs’ at humanist wedding ceremonies in Poland. It can in fact be decoded and interpreted in religious terms (the Bridegroom is Jesus and the Bride is the Church), and also secular (it could be just a story about love between man and woman, not between Jesus and the Church). Another popular text with religious provenance is ‘The Hymn to Love’ from St. Paul’s First Letter to Corinthians. Usually the fragments that are adaptable to the secular context are cited and those about ‘prophetic powers’ or ‘tongues’ are skipped. We can interpret these religious insertions as ‘chains of memory’ (Hervieu-Léger, 2000) and parts of collective consciousness. Traditional and religious elements might be important not because they together create a comprehensive set of beliefs, but because they compose people’s collective memory and imagination. The conducted research showed that at the majority of humanist weddings, brides were wearing white dresses. One of the celebrants, who explained this fact, used the description ‘phantasm of the white dress’ (C5_m_Pz), which means a rooted-in-childhood idea of a perfect wedding, of which one of the key elements is in fact the white dress. Many brides entered the church with their fathers (however, this custom for a long time has not been present in the Polish tradition: the groom used to visit the bride in her maiden home, they received the parental blessing and then, they enter the church or registry office together). Celebrants explain the popularity of this new in the Polish context practice of ‘giving the bride away’ as the ‘Americanization of wedding ceremonies’. According to them, Poles want a wedding ‘like in an American dream’ and popular culture (especially romantic comedies) are often the source of inspiration.

However, sometimes such traditional or religious elements used during ceremonies can be resemantised. In one of the interviews with a young couple, I asked why the bride and other women were wearing flower crowns during the ceremony. The answer was that it was because of the bride’s favourite band – ‘Florence and the Machine’, whose singer often performs with a flower crown on her head. Thus, the old forms are often replaced by new, alternative contents and meanings. Sometimes religious texts are replaced by fragments which come from completely irreligious contexts.

Due to these changes, new system of meanings is created: ‘A particular event, a new song, a topical phrase, will have its effect upon the network of meaning and thus change the system’ (Goody, 1977: 30). Conducted analysis shows such tweaks as: profanum displaces sacrum, rites become anthropo-, not theo- centric, and ‘informal’ replaces ‘formal’ (I describe these transitions more precisely in the following section).

Conclusions: Emerging new system of meanings

The emergence of alternatives for religious rites could be treated as a herald or even testimony of cultural changes concerned with various social spheres: religion (its privatisation, and secularisation of consciousness), identity (individualisation, the rise of reflexivity) or love and intimacy (and inclination towards ‘confluent love’). The observation of the transpositions and displacements within the wider system of meanings enables us to say more about the character of these transformations (in a sense they overlap): the secular suppresses the holy, theocentrism is replaced by anthropocentrism, and the ‘informal’ replaces the ‘formal’. However, I do not treat these categories as ‘absolute distinctions’, but rather as relational features that always exist in the context of their relations with other properties (Bourdieu, 1998).

Systems of collective representations are symbolic references to various worlds: social, natural, or supernatural. Analysis showed that a ‘naturalistic’, ‘temporal’ frame ‘creates the deep background’ for humanist marriage ceremonies. Celebrants usually do not give any precise definition of humanism, but analysis of contexts in which they use this phrase allows us to conclude that its meaning was mainly reduced to ‘what is secular’ and becomes a synonym of secularity (it should be remembered, however, that there is also religious humanism). In the oath, elements from the practice sphere and everyday life are often present. Everyday life becomes appreciated, receives additional value, and is gradually being woven into present-day axiologies. Temporality and ‘this’ world begin to play a dominant role. In this sense the secular suppresses the holy.

The analysed performances are largely rooted in ‘this’ life and the biographies of individuals. This can be expressed, for example, by thematic weddings linked to a particular hobby or lifestyle. Personalisation of humanist ceremonies can be explained by the reference to the concept of ‘private religion’: the person as well as his/her biography becomes the centre of the ceremony, of which the core is the affirmation of the individual, which is given a unique, almost ‘sacred’ status. The supernatural authority is replaced by temporal, which can be seen in the oath: at some ceremonies the vow is taken in the name of (non-religious) affirmed values. In contrast, at Catholic marriage ceremonies, God plays the role of a main ‘reference point’ and is named as a witness. Thus, in the analysed ceremonies we observed the transition from God to human/individual.

The provenance of the majority of cultural texts that appear in humanist marriage ceremonies is secular. References to the fragments which come from non-religious contexts are made more often. During the ceremonies, figures associated with humanism (both ancient – for example, Protagoras as well as modern, such as Rousseau) and contemporary literature or poetry are cited (E.E. Cummings, Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński, Khalil Gibran, Sarah Kane, Kurt Vonnegut, among others). Some quotations refer also to figures of popular culture. From texts with religious provenance only a few appeared – Saint Paul’s First Letter to Corinthians (‘The Hymn to Love’) and ‘Song of Songs’ (sometimes also ‘Ave Maria’ is performed). However, it seems that in most cases, even if religious texts are present at the ceremony, they are interpreted in irreligious ways. It might be also said, that these religious and traditional elements create a ‘chain of memory’. As noticed by Hervieu-Léger (2000), modernity (and secularization as its function) brings anomie and the loss of meaning. Yet at the same time it creates new needs for tradition and belonging, hence new ‘chains of belief’ are created. People discover an inherent need for a rite of passage, so they invent new traditions, which often become a patchwork made from various elements. Among them we can find: individual memories from childhood, collective memory and envisioned past (for example, a white dress, some religious songs); imaginations fed by a cultural trend (the rising popularity of outdoor weddings and the custom of the bride’s father giving her away are good examples in the Polish context); as well as religious elements. The latter are used for various reasons. Some couples decide against a church wedding, but they are still religious in a non-institutional way; some want to refer to text that will be recognizable for everyone (especially for the older generations), using religion as a kind of ‘anchor’, and finally, some interpret it in a non-religious way (just a beautiful song or a poem about love).

According to Alexander ‘systems of collective representations’ are encoded by actors of performance (with the support of a specialist – in this case – a celebrant). Not only was the content of humanist ceremonies of interest, but also the formal dimension and the construction of communication, or ‘the logic of design’, to use Handelman’s (1998) words. Humanist marriages in Poland are less standardised and formalised than their religious or civil counterparts and their structure is more ‘open’. They contain new elements as well as reconceptualised old (traditional) ones. The code of communication changes and the structure of humanist marriages becomes less formalised. ‘Informal’ takes the place of what is ‘formal’ – it can be expressed in various spheres, for instance, in the language sphere (i.e. a young couple has the opportunity to create their own oath), ‘means of symbolic production’ or ‘mise-en-scène’. As celebrants observed, the performative ‘I vow’ is increasingly being replaced by ‘I promise’, ‘I swear’ or ‘I will be for you’. The promise of the relationship for a lifetime is also often removed. In this way, performative (causative) power (understood in accordance with the theory of Austin – saying something is also doing something) declines. It may indicate that there is an alteration in the understanding of marriage and its indissolubility. At the same time, humanist weddings generally move towards performance on the ritual-performance continuum.

Although the dramatic structure of humanist marriage ceremonies still reflects the classic structure of rite of passage, the framework of humanist marriage ceremonies is blurred, which could be treated as a symptom of socio-cultural changes on the perception of marriage and family life. As Segalen (2008) noticed, contemporary couples are created as a result of a ‘step-by-step approach’ and it can also be seen in the course of humanist marriage ceremonies. The old story of a young girl separated from her parents and immediately married to a man, does not appear and it is more often replaced by the descriptions of the everyday life of couples who have been living together for quite a while. Contemporary marriage to a lesser degree emphasises the ‘transformation’. Tradition is invoked to anchor the commitment ‘in lasting from time immemorial’ (Segalen, 2008: 164). This is probably the reason for the continued popularity of Catholic weddings in Poland. Interestingly, after one civil marriage I attended, a friend, who seems to be rather secularised said that his own marriage ceremony will be ‘true’. I asked what it meant for him, and he answered: ‘In Church of course!’. This conversation is an example of the fact that although in Poland an increasing partial departure from institutional religion can be observed, at the same time, Poles are still attached to religious rites (especially to the rites of passage) and Catholicism seems to play the role of ‘cultural religion’. However, an emergence of humanist marriage ceremonies as an alternative for religious ones, could represent a sign of some important socio-cultural changes to come in Poland.

The conducted research sheds light on the direction of changes of religiosity in one of the most religiously homogenous countries in Europe. The analysis of the system of collective representations in humanist marriages in Poland enabled some ‘sensitizing concepts’ to be distinguished, which create the foundation for further research. The conclusions about the ambiguous role of Catholicism, the individualization which is vulnerable to becoming ‘mass produced’, the observed displacements within the wider system of meanings, are all starting points which could influence the direction of further empirical research. However, due to the fact that ‘systems of collective representations’ is only one of the elements of performance indicated by Alexander, to grasp the comprehensive view of humanist marriages in Poland, it is crucial to focus on the other elements.