Klaipėdos universitetas

The goal of the article is to describe the contribution of ecclesial or Church communities to the development of community work and the ways people get involved in community activities, seeing ecclesial communities as form of religious capital in society for regenerating the society and individuals. In the richness of community activities of Christian Church that are socially or caritatively-oriented, it is possible to find resources, with which the Christian Church can reach the people in need and fulfil its mission. Thus, the context of the article is the practical concept of Caritative Social Work being practiced in practical domains of modern social protection system. One of the factors, chosen for studying in this article, will be religious capital with its inner constituting conditions in order there could take place their activation in community environment. The task here is to explore specific social and religious factors and principles of action that would provide more full understanding about the effectiveness of functioning of local religious communities and their influence on community development. The article will end by case study analysis of two Christian ecclesial communities and deriving working principles, finding out which elements and principles of ecclesial community can constitute the effective community of social rehabilitation.

In this article I present the rudiments of a theoretical approach to the religious field in Lithuania. These reflections are part of an ongoing process of designing a research project on religious and moral pluralism. Religious pluralism is a fairly recent feature of East-Central European societies. When religion was suppressed by the socialist regimes after World War II, the church, especially the Catholic Church, be-came part of a polarized social experience built upon the dichotomy of the state versus the unified nation. In many countries the church established itself as the guardian of a national Christian tradition and claimed a moral monopoly on people’s values. Appearing as gross oversimplifications, presented in the article theoretical reflections can serve as helpful stepping-stones in the process of combining theoretical models and grassroots ethnography.