Biblical Authority and Moral Tensions in a Polish Catholic Migrant Community in Denmark

Abstract

The Catholic Church in Denmark hosts several migrant communities, with the Polish-speaking group among the largest and most visible. Institutionally, Catholic priests from Poland serve as chaplains for migrant congregations, accompanying these mobilities and providing educational practices (e.g., family guidance, biblical teaching). This paper examines how perspectives on Catholic scriptural authority differ between the Church’s institutional representatives and its members, revealing tensions between biblical authority, social accommodation, and family values in a migratory setting. Based on 20 months of fieldwork in a Polish Catholic community in Copenhagen, this paper highlights the dynamic interplay of how Church members assess scriptural authority as evaluative engagement in their transnational lives in the Danish public sphere, illustrated through interconnected ethnographic excerpts. This article illustrates how scriptural engagement offers a productive lens to explore divergent notions of Polish Catholic diasporic life and the tensions between transnational religion, national belonging, and moral navigation.

1. Introduction

The Roman Catholic Church in Denmark is culturally diverse, with multiple languages and forms of Catholic practice. The Church refers to these communities as “language groups”, defined by their use of non-Danish languages.1

While sharing the same parish, these groups typically consist of distinct linguistic communities, each expressing a nationalized form of Catholicism. One of the largest is the Polish group, present in 15 parishes throughout Denmark2. The sheer size of this language group reflects the development of Polish migration in Denmark. While Polish Catholicism in Denmark dates back to late 19th-century Polish agricultural workers, the current migrant landscape is part of the free labor mobility since the EU’s 2004 expansion (Friberg et al. 2014; Sandberg and Pijpers 2016). As in other countries, the Catholic Church accommodates the religious life emerging from these mobilities (Erdal 2017; Erdal and Friisberg Larssen 2024; Gallagher and Trzebiatowska 2017; Urbańska et al. 2022).

A common theme in research on Polish Catholic transnationalism is the Church’s role in cultivating a sense of “Polishness” (Grzymała-Moszczyńska et al. 2011; Jansen and Notermans 2012; Trzebiatowska 2010). This narrative—linking Catholicism with Polish nationhood—unfolds within migrant churches (Alvis 2016; Porter 2011; Zubrzycki 2013). “Polishness” is expressed through a wide repertoire of Catholic rituals, hymns, and religious materials that orient members beyond the Danish setting and toward Poland, the Catholic heartland. Research on other transnational Catholic communities reveals similar dynamics in which the Church functions as a “homeland within” (Kesylytė-Allix 2024; Nordin 2004; Tweed 1997). These practices are infrastructural features of Catholicism as a transnational institution, enabling homeland orientation and moral–spiritual support for migrants adapting to new cultural landscapes. The Church is obliged to provide pastoral care in the language of its migrant members (Cruz 2016). The homeland connection is further strengthened by the educational role of the Catholic Church, taking myriad approaches toward learning, didactics, integrating religious instructions and academic disciplines to foster intellectual and moral development through schools, and catechetical programs worldwide. This article highlights the role of biblical engagement within this interplay. This paper focuses on examples of scripture use within Polish-language groups to examine broader intersections between biblical ideologies, interpretive approaches, and the tensions inherent to transnational life. While not offering a complete picture of Polish Catholic migration, this paper foregrounds migrant experiences and evaluates different ideological approaches to the Bible. This article examines this on two levels: first, how Polish-background priests use the Bible to support their congregants; second, how Polish Catholic parents respond to biblical instruction in Danish public schools, contrasting it to what they call a “Polish” biblical education model. As in much of Europe, Polish migration to Denmark includes everything from circular migrants to long-term settlers (Favell 2018; Felbo-Kolding and Leschke 2023).

This study focuses on the latter, examining how long-term settlers engage with the Polish Catholic Church as a site of moral and cultural orientation. While not all Polish migrants are active in the Catholic Church in Denmark, their varying levels of involvement are still visible. Against this background, this paper explores how Christian migrants in Denmark assess and refer to scriptural authority in response to Danish secular education. It highlights how both parents and migrant clergy navigate tensions between religious tradition and social accommodation. This article thus aims to encourage further research investigating the intersection of scripture and transnational Christianity in Denmark. Drawing on ethnographies of scripture in the contexts of transition, it treats scriptural engagement not merely as a tool for cultural transmission but as a pragmatic, adaptive resource in migrants’ transnational lives. This article first contextualizes Polish Catholic transnationalism in Denmark and then outlines the theoretical framework inspired by ethnographic studies of scripture in Christianity. It proceeds with ethnographic examples and concludes with a discussion of this study’s analytical contributions and future potential.

2. Context—A Site of Polish Catholic Transnationalism in Secular Denmark

Before turning to the religious practices of Polish Catholic migrants, it is important to address several aspects of religion in Danish public life. Given space constraints, this section focuses on general themes that were consistently present in my interlocutors’ accounts. Sociologically, Danish society is characterized by a form of “soft secularism”. The Evangelical Lutheran Church is the dominant religion, partially supported and connected to the state through mechanisms such as taxation and participation in public ceremonies. Denmark is also known for a culture in which religion is largely considered a private matter (Christoffersen et al. 2012; Gundelach 2011; Lüchau 2015; Zuckerman 2017). For many minorities, this combination creates tension: Protestantism maintains public dominance, while religion is expected to remain private and largely absent from spaces like schools. Protestantism has also historically shaped public education, particularly through the inclusion of Christianity as a core component of the national curriculum.

Since the constitutional reform of 1849 that guaranteed full religious freedom3, the Roman Catholic Church has remained a minority institution in Denmark, with around 50,000 official members. In recent decades, the Catholic Church has become a key religious space for migrant groups such as the Vietnamese, Polish, Filipino, and Latin American communities. Through its global infrastructure and long-standing experience as a minority church, it provides a platform for migrants to sustain religious life while navigating Denmark’s soft-secular public sphere. Catholic migrants thus form an often-invisible minority. Identifying as Christians, Catholics do not generally practice in ways that trigger public debate—in stark contrast to, for example, Muslim immigrants. Encounters between migrant Catholicism and the Danish Protestant public unfold—as this article shows—within differing conceptions of Christianity’s public role, particularly regarding education and kinship.

This brings us to St. Anne’s Church, a red-brick church built between 1936 and 1938, located in Amager, Copenhagen, between the bustling Amagerbrogade and a quieter residential area. As a central site for Polish Catholic practice in Copenhagen, St. Anne’s reflects the Church’s broader role in offering religious services, linguistic and national community, and education programs for Polish migrants. The church also hosts Masses in Danish and English. St. Anne’s hosts Copenhagen’s largest Polish Mass and serves as a venue for cultural events beyond liturgical functions. Among the churches offering Polish-language services in Copenhagen, St. Anne’s stands out for its extended prayer sessions, lay-led activities, and night prayers. It also operates as a hub for religious education, offering Polish-language catechism classes to supplement children’s religious instruction in Danish public schools. Weekly Pytania (“questions”) meetings provide a forum for families to discuss moral issues related to family life, marriage, and Catholic values. Polish priests and nuns lead these efforts, organizing Bible study and catechism sessions. These church-led activities serve a dual purpose, offering guidance for migrants adjusting to Danish society while preserving what many interlocutors see as a distinctly Polish approach to religious education. In Poland, Catholicism plays a central role in public education, with clergy involved in curriculum design and teacher training (Davis and Miroshnikova 2012; Mąkosa 2015; Zielińska and Zwierzdzyński 2013).

Some members of the Polish Catholic community at St. Anne’s strive to maintain aspects of this model, cultivating a scriptural didactic rooted in both the Polish language and specific interpretive traditions. In other words, the community fosters a mode or religious teaching that reflects a Catholic authoritative approach shaped not only by language but also by ideological perspectives on scripture that my interlocutors characterize as distinctly “Polish”. Of course, the motives for joining these educational activities vary. While it is about maintaining language skills for some, others see it as a practical educational service provided by the Church, possibly citing time constraints that prevent them from teaching religion at home. It is also important to note that these practices are debated within the community. Several informants criticized what they saw as problematic aspects of Polish Catholic culture being reproduced in the migrant setting. Despite this internal debate, St. Anne’s remains a central site for engaging with what my interlocutors refer to as the “Polish way” of teaching religion—particularly regarding the role of scripture. The following examples illustrate how members actively navigate these traditions in response to the moral tensions of their transnational lives.

3. Scripture in Transition

This article shows how Polish migrants engage scripture as a means of religious continuity and a response to new moral landscapes. Combining recent academic research on the social life of scripture with studies on Catholic transnationalism offers a valuable framework for analyzing how contemporary Polish Catholic migrants engage with the Bible.

This study draws inspiration from recent ethnographic engagements with Christianity that highlight the active, evaluative social life of central Christian tenets, leading to new sub-strands within the anthropology of Christianity. Ethnographic work on the social life of prayer (Bandak 2017, 2021; Christian 1981; Orsi 2016), priestly discipline (Herzfeld 2015; Mayblin 2017), and pilgrimage (Coleman 2021; Coleman and Eade 2004; Eade and Garbin 2007) has illuminated concrete Christian practices and the affective, sensorial, moral, and political articulations and boundary-making they elicit.

Within ethnographies of Christianity, this article draws on Webb Keane’s (2007, 2018) notion of semiotic ideologies. This term refers to how symbols are understood, interpreted, and expected to function within specific social contexts. In this case, semiotic ideology helps to reveal the underlying structures shaping how individuals and communities assign meaning to scripture, interpret its authority, and engage with its material presence. The perceived importance of scripture—its significance, interpretation, and impact in specific contexts—is assessed via the semiotic ideology present. As Keane emphasizes, however, this is not simply a matter of false consciousness or passive adherence to tradition; rather, it highlights the reflexive ways people use symbolic meaning to articulate moral or political positions.

From this perspective, analyzing how scripture is ideologically sustained allows us to explore the evaluative work and emotional investments people make during times of transition. Related scholarship on Christianity has examined the moral and social worlds shaped by scripture and textual ideologies (Bielo 2018, 2021; Bielo et al 2009; Engelke 2007, 2013; Malley 2004). These studies move beyond the text itself, emphasizing the social engagement of scripture and how it refines our understanding of the social and cultural contexts in which scripture operates and the political, moral, and emotional significance people invest in it.

In his introduction to a volume on cross-cultural Bible reading, James Bielo (Bielo et al. 2009) distinguishes between different analytical approaches to the Bible as a cultural object. Biblical ideologies focus on how institutional and historically diverse approaches to scripture and scriptural authority structure Bible usage, emphasizing the ideologies sustaining specific uses of the text. For example, Lutheran vs. Catholic approaches to scripture may translate into distinct ideologies that extend beyond catechism or exegesis. Catholic and Protestant learning circles may reflect competing notions of authority, subjectivity, and the relationship between scripture and politics. In the ethnographic field examined here, Catholic vs. secular engagement with scripture also connects to contested notions of religious upbringing and the authority of religious traditions. What my interlocutors refer to as a “Polish” way of engaging the Bible reflects a certain scriptural ideology, embedded in broader ideological tensions emerging from transnational navigation, such as kinship maintenance and the authority of the family in public education. Given the interplay between historical, theological, and cultural contexts, it is unsurprising that ideologies differ across landscapes. Even within the same setting, a specific textual ideology may produce multiple interpretations; for example, several of my interlocutors criticized Polish Catholic communities for replicating what they saw as problematic elements of Catholic cultural authority from Poland. As one commented on the religious instruction at St. Anne’s: “They take the worst side of Catholic dominance in Poland and bring it to Denmark”. Such criticism underscores the need to examine how dominant and marginal textual ideologies are navigated. A second analytical approach is Biblical hermeneutics, which focuses on interpretive strategies employed in Bible readings. This approach highlights how communities develop around shared understandings of scriptural authority—with hermeneutics shaped not only by textual engagement but also by ethnic, regional, and national identities. These interpretive strategies are rooted in and shaped by dominant and marginal textual ideologies. Disputes over interpretation often reflect broader social tensions and conflicts. These frameworks help to unpack both the effectual landscape of biblical usage within the cultural and moral worlds of a Polish nationalized religion in which migrants engage in their lives in transition. Referring to ideologies in the plural acknowledges a multitude of competing, often contested meanings assigned to scripture—its broader semiotic ideologies4. Focusing on available interpretive strategies and their ideological structure allows for an analysis of how migrants creatively and evaluatively engage scripture in a transnational setting involving institutional representatives and church members. Their evaluation of Danish educational practices becomes a moment of broader moral assessment of the ideologies they encounter when accommodating and negotiating new terrains. While these interpretive differences are sustained and informed by traditions of Bible reading, I do not argue that they constitute a simple importation from one place to another or merely an ideological reproduction of biblical authority from Catholic Poland to secular Denmark. Rather, I see them as pragmatic, creative engagements with the interpretive and ideological resources available—deeply connected to aspirations for moral family life in a transitional context. The learning circles examined here become key sites where scripture engagement reveals broader challenges of navigating between cultural and religious contexts and the contested hermeneutics and ideologies that structure those contexts. In religious migration, this perspective frames the Bible as a tangible expression of the emotional and moral influence exerted by nationalized forms of Catholicism in transnational settings. It aligns with scholarship on migration and religion that moves beyond push–pull models or religion as capital (Franceschelli and O’Brien 2014; Goulbourne et al. 2010), turning instead toward more open-ended inquiry into how migrants engage pedagogies of religion embedded in the emotions, desires, and moral struggles of a life in transition.

In a transnational context, the attention to available ideologies and interpretive strategies sheds light not only on how people engage scripture in different places but also how they assess and balance competing notions of biblical authority—what the Bible can and cannot do; that is, its different semiotic ideologies. This approach foregrounds reflexive action in moments requiring the renegotiation of scriptural authority and highlights how actors creatively draw on the resources available. By foregrounding such a reflexive and pragmatic approach, this analysis highlights instances where actors creatively draw on the ideological resources available. The biblical ideologies and interpretive strategies observed at St. Anne’s are not merely coherent answers “out there” waiting for migrants to subscribe to them; rather, they are resources that migrants mobilize in response to specific ethical challenges in and between social arenas.

This perspective resonates in many ways with Jaqueline Hidalgo’s (2018) notion of the Bible as a “homing device” used by Cuban migrants in the United States to create emotional continuity. Similarly, this article explores how Polish immigrants use scripture to construct moral foundations amid migration. However, my focus is not on the Bible as an object but rather on its use—how people evaluate its use by others, what prompts scriptural engagement, and the interpretive strategies and ideologies they deploy. The transnational aspect of Catholicism resembles what Valentina Napolitano (2015) calls the “passionate machine” of the Catholic Church, emphasizing how transnational Catholic practices shape a diasporic context and correspond to migration-related emotional anxieties and tensions in a new environment. It is a “machine” in that the work of such passions is part of the Catholic imagination among the members and an inherited element within the institution itself. Such infrastructure sits in an interplay between people, institutions, material objects, and affective experiences that link local religious practices to a Catholic homeland. For example, the authoritative element of the Catholic priesthood is an inherent institutional feature of the Church while also directly attending to the emotional and moral tensions in the lived experiences among migrants. Along a similar logic, the Church enables Polish-language practices within the Church with elements similar to religious teaching in Poland. Clerical authority is an expected part of the transnational institutional element of the Church, and the emotional attachment to a specific nationalized and linguistic form of Catholicism is a strong feature among migrants, stemming from their experiences “from below”. Thus, the Polish elements in the Church are not only part of migrants’ navigational practices but also institutionally enabled, forming a passionate infrastructure. In a transnational Catholic setting, engaging with scripture in a certain language and form of education sits within a more extensive infrastructure of passions and emotions that inform life in transition.

I analyze scripture as a flexible ideological and interpretative resource, not a fixed authority. Engagement with scripture reflects an ongoing negotiation between Polish Catholic traditions and their evolving moral landscapes in migration. These practices are not inherited passively but represent strategic adaptive, affective, and evaluative practice between biblical ideologies. Such navigations are informed by migration experiences, institutional structures, and personal aspirations for a morally grounded life. This analysis thus attends to how people draw on the available ideological and interpretive frameworks, through which they creatively assess the religious authority of scripture in response to the moral tensions of migration. Scriptural engagement thus sits at the intersection of continuity and transformation, where the Bible becomes both a bearer of moral authority and a critique of perceived secular deficiencies. These engagements further illustrate the connection of effects in transnational Catholicism—the passionate machine—with the moral disruptions brought about by migration, as exemplified by reactions toward upbringing and education (and not least the use of scripture in such moments).

4. Navigating Through Scripture

The following excerpts are from fieldwork carried out between October 2021 and June 2023. During this time, I regularly attended Polish Masses and other church activities at St. Anne’s, including weekly meetings, social activities, prayer meetings, and Bible study sessions in people’s homes. Some of the focused, semi-structured interviews in this period took place on the church premises and adjacent spaces, including post-Mass “church coffee” and social gatherings. Other interview settings included people’s workplaces and their homes. I interviewed 24 informants (18 members of the congregation and 6 priests).

This study focuses on individuals with Polish migrant backgrounds who actively engage with the Catholic Church while navigating their transnational lives between Denmark and Poland. To refine the analysis, I established specific criteria for participant selection: all participants needed to have experience practicing Catholicism in both Denmark and Poland and needed to identify as practicing Catholics. Two interview guides—one for church members and one for priests—were initially developed and refined over the course of the project. All participants remain anonymous.

Upon entering St. Anne’s during a typical Sunday Mass, the sensorial tapestry of Catholicism—with icons, incense, organ music, and the choir—expresses a nostalgic longing toward the Polish homeland. Pictures of Polish national saints, such as Maximilian Kolbe (the martyr who died in Auschwitz) and “the Polish Pope”, John Paul II, decorate the room. Hymns are often from the Polish romantic Catholic tradition, such as Boże, coś Polskę (“God save Poland”), and prayer cards with pictures of Polish Catholic figures lie scattered on the tables in the entrance hall together with Polish Catholic newspapers. The notice board on the wall displays account numbers for charities in Poland. It advertises services in Denmark for Polish migrants: Danish language teaching, Bible study groups, flyers for doctors and psychiatrists who speak Polish, AA meetings in Polish, car-share opportunities between Denmark and Poland, prayer groups for families and couples, pilgrimage journeys to Poland, and flyers for Polish online radio stations.

The Catholic ritual practices reflect the narrative of Polish nationhood and Catholicism. The church embraces unofficial traditions, such as Święconka, the Polish blessing of sausage, eggs, and bread during Easter. It also hosts more politically significant rituals, like devotional prayers for Mary, who is officially recognized as the Queen of Poland, during the Polish Day of Independence. St. Anne’s Church organizes informal gatherings after Mass, transforming the space into a community hub where people of Polish descent come together to speak their language and share fellowship over coffee and cake, including the creamy Kremówka Papieska. These gatherings occur in the church basement, which serves as a venue for celebrations, such as birthdays and anniversaries. During these informal meetings, the room buzzes with conversations about topics ranging from Polish football matches to the evolving political situation in Poland.

The physical space at St. Anne’s contributes to and may foster a form of diasporic nationhood on multiple levels. The church displays explicit connections to Poland, including images of Polish saints and reminders of Polish historical events. It also incorporates more subtle aspects of national identity, including nostalgic elements like Polish cakes and birthday songs. These features underscore the physical and ritual context in which engagement with scripture occurs, suggesting that Bible reading takes place within a framework reflecting the emotional and social dimensions of transnational life, consistent with its semiotic ideology. Thus, biblical engagement is intertwined with broader ideological themes, including national belonging, political discourse, community formation, and moral values. This perspective aligns with the concept of the “passionate machine”, in which religious spaces operate as dynamic constellations of affect, materiality, and ideology. However, not all of these elements are always present in how my interlocutors use the Bible; rather, the church provides these features as material and ideological resources that individuals may draw upon when negotiating the role of scripture in their lives. With this context in mind, the following sections present fieldwork examples that illustrate the role of scriptural engagement at St. Anne’s. The first involves a priest engaging in Bible reading with members of the congregation as part of his migrant chaplaincy. The second features a husband and father responding to the religious education at his children’s school. The third highlights a couple in the midst of family planning.

5. Responding to the Moral Tensions of Migration

The first interviewee is a priest who has received pastoral training in Poland but now works for Danish- and Polish-speaking congregations in Denmark. During our conversation, he explained how, in addition to his role as a minister, he also provides aid and guidance to families from Poland who are struggling to accommodate to life in Denmark. He is generally supportive of the Church but also hesitant regarding the role of Catholicism as a Polish diaspora religion. He finds the explicit—and as he calls it, “ideological”—connection between Catholicism and Polish national identity challenging. For him, the Church risks becoming an exclusive part of the church landscape in Denmark, enabling and maintaining the creation of a “little Poland” instead of integrating with the other parts of the Church. He also repeatedly stresses how the Polish Catholic migrant community is “very diverse … from the most liberal to the most Conservative”. While he holds his own opinions and views on the proper forms of Catholicism in a transnational setting, he also downplays such attitudes when working as a chaplain for migrants who are struggling with the adjustment to life in Denmark. He has frequently engaged with families from Poland who are insecure about the role of Catholic authority in places where Catholicism is a minority. A recurring challenge relates to how religion is approached in the Danish school system. I talked with him in his office on a cold November day in 2023.

“The first conflict is often the school, and this leads to other things”, he told me, stressing how difficult this can be as a newcomer to Denmark. “Some of them have their children come home and question God and religion. They have heard about other religions, and so on”. I then asked him about his take on the background for such challenges:

I get many questions from parents about the theology and faith because of questions that children asked them. For example, how can we understand the Bible? I also made a kind of catechesis for adults. I study the Bible myself, so I know what it means—with texts, etc.—that we can talk about. They must understand that it isn’t the same as Poland, where everyone believes in God and knows the Bible.

I asked him to elaborate on the role of school teaching in Denmark, after which he actively compared religious education between Denmark and Poland:

In schools in Poland, children receive a kind of, let’s say, “pastoral” or “theological” education. Here in Denmark, it’s more about science. In Poland, it’s an education in the faith. But here [at St. Anne’s] it’s better, as people themselves come to faith in God.5

He sees a tension between his favorite biblical interpretation, on the one hand, and his pastoral duties toward migrating families and individuals, on the other. Tensions between paternal values, theological knowledge, the role of education, and Catholicism’s epistemic privilege in teaching religion in public schools emerge from such encounters. Returning to the concepts mentioned earlier, such experiences reflect an evaluation of the different forms of Bible reading among migrants when settling in Denmark. The concern that Polish Catholicism in Denmark might form a “little Poland” rather than integrate with the broader Catholic Church suggests a tension between a nationalized textual ideology—which ties biblical engagement to a Polish Catholic identity—and a more universalist approach that aligns with his wish to integrate the different language groups. In other words, there is an awkwardness between the priest’s pastoral care for families who favor what he calls an approach to the Bible as “science” and his theological understanding of scripture and Catholic social teaching. While he is committed to the migrant families’ spiritual well-being, he is also critical of Catholicism’s privileged status in public education in Poland and supports comparing religions or reading the Bible as a historical text. His exegetical preference is not always attuned to the responsibility of migrant pastoral care. As he explained in our interview, while leaning over and maintaining eye contact, “I’m a Jesuit”, noting that he has “no problem with historical-critical readings of the Bible”. He emphasizes, “You know, it’s a collection of myths, just like other religions”. Nevertheless, his role in guiding families and nurturing their spiritual well-being compels him to temper such exegetical discussions. While such an approach to scripture resonates with the Jesuit tradition of historical–critical perspective and literary criticism, he activates this perspective according to each situation. As he describes it, however, he is obliged to assist with the troubles the members from Poland might face. He further stressed that this is a matter of situational sensibility, rooted in the Jesuit principle of cura personalis—care for the entire person:

If someone comes to me with questions about scripture and feels deeply alienated by what they would describe as the “Danish” way of talking about God or the Bible, I’m not going to lecture them on hermeneutics.

Such reflections illustrate how the ideology of scriptural authority is not simply imposed from above but rather shaped by the community’s needs and expectations. He thus embodies a form of pastoral pragmatism, where theological conviction intersects with the lived realities of migration, adaptation, and religious pluralism.

This brings us to the second example from one of the church members who has been actively seeking advice on scriptural reading. This interviewee, a man in his early 40s, is originally from Wroclaw. Together with his wife and two children in Denmark since 2016, he works in the industrial sector. I spoke with him in March 2023 in his home, where we moved between topics ranging from Polish politics to the differences between Denmark and Poland and the role that Catholicism plays in his life. He is a regular churchgoer at the Polish Mass at St. Anne’s. In 2021, he intensified his involvement in the church by becoming active in a Bible study group arranged by the church. When giving his reasons for his intensified interest in scripture, he points to a specific moment when his son came home from religious teaching in his public school in Denmark:

One day, my son came home from school, came to me, and said, “Dad, I don’t believe God exists”. Sometimes, they do this; they don’t understand. They have religion lessons in school, and they talk about all the religions, Muslim, Protestantism, Judaism. They read the Bible just like any other book.

He continues to connect this consideration with more intimate ethical matters; “They’re taught that it’s completely normal to have a sex life as a teenager and an abortion or two, you know. That’s just not right. For me, at least”. He criticizes the status of the Bible, highlighting his general experience at the school, which he feels disrupts the religious traditions and worldviews he seeks to uphold. He then expresses concern about the school’s approach to the body and reproduction, which he finds problematic. In these excerpts, he links the diminishing emphasis on religiosity to what he perceives as a lax moral stance on reproduction and sexuality.

Returning to the broader perspective, this illustrates how tensions around biblical hermeneutics in the Danish public sphere are embedded in a broader experience of conflict, including an unease with a liberal approach to sexuality. He then tells me that because of these feelings of estrangement, his children now attend religion classes and Bible studies at St. Anne’s, and he and his wife have joined Zoom meetings with other Polish migrants that connect family ethics and the Bible. His engagement with the Bible is not solely as an intellectual, devotional, or theological pursuit but is deeply embedded in broader orientations toward new moral landscapes. Here, it is not merely about scripture itself but about the extent to which scriptural authority should—and can—be questioned in a public educational context.

The final example concerns a couple in their late 20s who are expecting their first child. They are active members of the Polish congregation at St. Anne’s. During our conversation in March 2022, we discussed parenting, education, and the differences between living in Denmark and Poland. Before our interview, they reviewed the topics we would cover and said a prayer together. When I asked about the role of the Bible in their lives, they explained that they place a high priority on it. They participate in Bible study groups with other expatriates and strive to maintain a connection to scripture both as a couple and in their respective relationships with God. Our conversation then shifted to education.

We discussed the school options for their child, considering whether to choose a Danish public school, a Catholic school, a Catholic school offering Polish-language instruction, or another Christian private school6. He told me he dislikes how God is kept entirely out of the classroom in Denmark, suggesting he would prefer a space that allows for a more “Polish way” of teaching religion, as he put it, with a hint of sarcasm. She added that for her, teaching and practicing Catholicism within the family is part of a broader moral navigation and maintenance of their life in Denmark. She emphasizes a sharp contrast between how religious authority is expressed in the Danish and Polish public spheres. She connects such differences to notions of gender roles, kinship, and sexuality. “In the Bible, with Jesus—that’s the first time woman is made equal to man. And we can see that in our society today, where women have the same rights”. For her, such connections have been distorted:

Jesus is the greatest feminist you can find in history. I’ve also experienced how feminists in Denmark focus on the fact that they don’t want the same rights as men, but they want to be allowed to be like men (…) they also want to sleep with as many men as possible, and they also want to be offensive. Whereas the church’s feminism is about the man having to love the woman and the woman having to love the man7.

In the final excerpt, she contrasts two forms of feminism: one rooted in Catholicism and the Bible and informed by a relationship with God, and another she characterizes as “aggressive” and “offensive”. This contrast reflects her perspective on the “right” way to understand feminism and gender equality. Her view refers to the broader question of Catholicism’s ideological role in the West and is grounded in what she considers a proper theological understanding of the relationship between men and women.

What is noteworthy in these excerpts is the multiple categories used to articulate a moral resistance toward what the speaker perceives as non-Catholic ways of practicing feminism. There is a religious Catholic/non-Catholic categorization at play, reinforced through specific Bible use. The use of the Bible also corresponds to a national preservation of being Polish in a new place, hence the importance of scripture and their study of the Bible together with other Polish expats. Such Bible study groups also help to carve out a space of community that the couple expresses in direct contrast to the world outside the Church. Their approach to the Bible is further enmeshed in evaluating educational practices of the inclusion and exclusion of biblical and Catholic authority in the Danish school system. This is connected to the quality of the biblical narratives (e.g., Jesus as a feminist) in a world that she portrays as distorted as regards the roots of gender equality. All of this is articulated as an ideological counterpoint not only toward a non-Catholic approach but also toward what they describe as a non-Polish way of approaching these connections.

These moments exemplify how engagement with different forms of interpretive strategies (the biblical hermeneutics) and ideologies overlaps with the moral tensions and dissonance of transnational life. The responses range from the priest’s professional evaluation of migrant pastoral care and hermeneutical preferences to the second interview participant’s struggles with the role of religious upbringing and, finally, the intersection with broader explicit ideological contrasts, as seen with the couple. The excerpts thus show how approaches to biblical authority connect with an attempt to integrate family ethics and biblical authority. The importance of a particular approach to family life and scripture is connected to broader efforts of moral resilience and a sense of alienation when living between two countries. Scriptural engagement in these instances overlaps with personal aspirations, experiences with societal expectations, and attempts at establishing moral and religious perseverance.

The excerpts show the various interpretive strategies available and emphasized among these mobilities. One is the perceived secular approach described by the interview participants, in which scriptural authority is downplayed in favor of hermeneutics that offer a more comparative outside perspective on the Bible. As a counter-response to these experiences, scripture guides a moral and political articulation toward what she sees as “right” and “wrong” forms of feminism. This engagement is further connected to a nationalized emphasis on scriptural authority; hence, the mention of “the Polish way” as an implicit response to what she describes as a “Danish way”. Using the Bible and scriptural references in these transitions may create clear distinctions between what are considered right and wrong forms of Catholicism at specific moments. This is evident in the categorical connection between Catholic Polishness, which is linked to a “correct” form of biblical engagement, followed by an emphasis on the demarcated “right” approach to education, and ultimately tied to the “proper” understanding of gender equality. However, engagement within the same learning circles can also reveal how evaluating diverse scriptural ideologies fosters reflection on the unfinished future projects of Catholic life in a transnational context.

When viewed as hermeneutical strategies and biblical ideologies, these ethnographic moments allow us to see more than just contrasting opinions on scripture—they illuminate how ideas about what the Bible is and does within and beyond the Catholic environments. Thus, the concept of semiotic ideology helps in understanding how actors assign meaning and moral weight to scripture differently, whether they are in a parish meeting, evaluating their children’s experience in a classroom, or participating in online Bible study group. This provides analytical traction that sits between individual experiences, on the one hand, and the institutional framing of scripture on the other.

6. Concluding Discussion

In this article, I have argued that the Polish transnational faction of the Catholic Church in Denmark, as found in St. Anne’s Church in Amager, enables a scriptural practice that members and clergy articulate as distinctly “Polish”. I have used these examples to show how active members of this community draw on scripture to navigate and accommodate their lives in Denmark while remaining connected to Poland. The fieldwork excerpts illustrate the wide range of modalities that scriptural authority can take as actors adapt to new contexts.

These examples support an approach to scripture that considers the interplay between foundational texts, institutional support for scripture education, and the specific situations in which scripture is engaged. While this does not fully represent Polish Catholic transnational scriptural engagement, the cases still hold analytical relevance. They demonstrate how reading and referencing scripture unfolds amid the ongoing negotiation of transnational life. The first aspect concerns how scripture addresses moral tensions in migrant accommodation, such as childrearing, education, the revitalization of Catholic faith, and divergent views on sexuality. These conceptual perspectives enable attention to the ways in which scriptural texts are activated in diverse—and sometimes ambivalent—ways. This perspective also foregrounds the social processes by which certain readings gain authority or legitimacy and helps explain how migrants navigate competing expectations from institutional religion, public secularism, and personal moral convictions—as well as the creative ways they invest in and draw on such elements in their Bible use.

The evaluation of scripture in these examples is rooted in disruptive moments, which my interlocutors easily recalled when describing their experiences of accommodation in Denmark. As the examples show, these navigations often involve delicate balances between personal beliefs, institutional frameworks, and situational circumstances. In some instances, the tension between “Polish” and “Danish” interpretative strategies and ideologies emerges within different segments of the Polish Catholic Church itself—a contestation articulated by the priest. In other cases, the contestation lies between interpretations of scripture within the Church and in the Danish public school system. Taken together, I argue that these moments reveal how tensions between different scriptural ideologies are not simply the result of a coherent Catholic tradition imposed on a secular Danish public. Rather, they draw attention to the moral and pragmatic qualities of a particular didactic approach to scripture—rooted in Poland—that actors apply, adapt, and innovate within and between various scripture-learning settings in the midst of the transition experience.

Before concluding this article, a caveat and a look toward is in order. This study offers neither a comprehensive presentation nor an exhaustive analysis of scriptural engagement in a transnational Catholic setting—let alone the role of scripture among Polish Catholics in Denmark. I have, however, aimed to highlight examples that may inspire future reflections. For example, future analysis of scripture study among transnational Catholics could pursue more comparative approaches. Language groups in the Catholic Church often share parish spaces. As observed in St. Anne’s, Catholicism in such settings is often enmeshed in nationally inflected forms of interpretation that extend beyond language alone. The Bible may be tied to histories of oppression and cultural resilience. A promising analytical direction would be to explore how ideologies of scripture unfold in other communities (e.g., Filipino, Vietnamese, Ghanaian, or Croatian Catholic) in Denmark. The explicit transnational character of the Catholic Church invites such inquiries, which could reveal how diverse modalities of scripture emerge across mobile populations. This approach could also illuminate culturally specific engagements without resorting to essentializing ethnic forms of Catholicism.

Another relevant avenue for future research is the role of new media in disseminating scriptural didactics among Church members. For example, we saw how the second interviewee and his wife began participating in Zoom discussions with other Polish migrants on Catholicism, family life, and the Bible. These grassroots Bible-study initiatives—especially in the wake of COVID-19—suggest new cross-border ways of engaging scripture. Investigating such media forms could deepen our understanding of the specific techniques people use to develop religious didactics and biblicism in their transnational lives. In other words, what kinds of communication resources inform the interpretive strategies at play?

This article has highlighted specific instances that illuminate the interplay between scripture, transnational Catholicism, and the lived experiences of migration. These moments are embedded in the passionate infrastructure of the Catholic Church and its biblical ideologies, bridging the specific and the general. In achieving this, I have shown how foregrounding tensions around scripture in ethnographic inquiry can deepen and expand our understanding of Catholic transnationalism and how religious actors engage scripture as they navigate new social terrains.