This article considers research topics which are rarely pursued in the fields of Polish anthropology and ethnography. It is an introduction to a sensitive and problematic issue. The under-researched topics are connected with politics and it is for this reason that they tend to be marginalised. The marginalisation of various topics is also due to attitudes about the public sphere, including research, that are embedded in the local (Polish) social order, practices and beliefs. The article presents an assessment of the research potential of exploring the relationship between religiosity (in the classical ethnological sense as a religious culture) and politics. It focuses on the formation of a public sphere with special status at the junction of two discourses and two sets of symbols – religious and political. This public sphere contains numerous references to the sacred due to the strong presence of religious symbols, priests, language and gestures reserved for the religious sphere. This, according to the classical criteria introduced by Jürgen Habermas, changes the sense of public sphere. The type of public sphere characterised by a religious-political or sacred-secular character is strongly limited in terms of deliberativeness. Thanks to sanctification and the connection with religion and religious beliefs – that which belongs to politics, i.e. that which is national, state and social, acquires additional power and unquestionable and absolute properties. Thus the article shows the research potential of the field.
Keywords: Anthropology of religion, interdisciplinary approach, public sphere, religious-political space