Slovak immigrants in Poland after 2004 in the light of surveys conducted on the social networking site Facebook

Abstract

Confessional policy is primarily a specific kind of public policy of the state, focused on the activity of religious organizations (religious or confessional associations), that is, communities whose purpose is to confess and spread religious faith (within the meaning of each religion), having their own hierarchy, doctrine and worship. The essence of politics is then shaping the relationship of the state with individual religious relationships, but also influencing the relations between them. The religious policy of the state includes activities of a conceptual, program, operational and executive nature, implemented by specialized entities of state power towards religious entities. Under the conditions of a democratic state, they are administrative institutions (independent, e.g. in the form of an office or ministry, or being part of a wider structure, e.g. a department within the ministry) and special services (e.g. monitoring the activities of religious fundamentalists or destructive sects). In authoritarian and totalitarian countries, the subject pursuing denominational policy may be more complex (e.g., apart from state structures, party structures have a decisive status, and extended special services also play a greater role). Confessional policy is conditioned by a number factors, among which the following can be distinguished: internal (e.g. the specificity and the religious and confessional structure of the state, the political system, the ideology prevailing in the state, the pragmatics of political struggle, the legal and systemic religious model of the state, the relationships between the ethno-cultural and religious identifications) and external (e.g., state security considerations, the nature of confessional policy within the international environment, geopolitical conditions, international legal norms in which the said state participates, the scale and nature of international "networking" of a given religious community). Among the varieties of confessional policy the following can be distinguished: the confessional policy of the concession (practically unrestricted, with the activities of a religious association state-supported or  at least approved), the confessional policy of rationalizing (consent of the state to the basic activity of religious associations, directed mainly at the faithful of their own community and consent to limited external activity) and the confessional policy of liquidation (counteracting the negatively evaluated tendencies and phenomena occurring in the activities of a religious organization, or even attempts at its delegalisation and complete eradication). The confessional policy of the state is most often considered as a component of internal policy, however, it may also be an important component of foreign policy.