"The Law and Justice party faces re-election in Poland and the churches have been their foremost propagandists"
As Poland goes to the polls on Sunday, the churches that were built in the 1970s and 1980s as a sanctuary against an oppressive state are now instruments in a political debate, writes Owen Hatherley.
Between 2010 and 2015, I lived part of each year in Poland. I rented a flat in London, my partner owned a flat in Warsaw, so I had the luxury of immersing myself in a new country while always able to leave whenever I wanted, thanks to the budget airlines that were used as a commuting shuttle by thousands of Poles. Never quite mastering the language, I'd let my eye be caught by things ? a neon sign, a mural, a building. The buildings that caught my eye most were the extraordinary 1980s mega-churches that dominated every housing estate.
Poland goes to the polls on Sunday, and it's those Catholic churches I think of when I think about the choices the country faces. They have become the site of political propaganda for the Law and Justice party. The pulpits of these magnificent churches have become the platform from which the party rails against what it sees as Poland's social ills. I lived in the southern suburbs of Warsaw, at almost the exact point where the pre-war city grid suddenly breaks up and is replaced with spaced-out housing estates of prefabricated blocks, most of them built in "People's Poland" in the 1970s, during an economic boom that ended in a political and economic crisis. I watched as these blocks were renovated with pastel colour schemes, which harmon...
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