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UDK 316.3:2-41(470+571)                                                 

DOI: 10.15507/VMU.024.201403.153

SECULAR RELIGIOSITY IN RUSSIA: SELF-IDENTITY AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES OF BELIEVERS (the case study of the Republic of Mordovia)

О. А. Bogatova.
(professor of Sociology chair of History and Sociology Institute, Ogarev Mordovia State University (Saransk, Russia), Doktor Nauk degree holder in Sociological sciences, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

The article analyzes the attitudes and characteristics of modern Russian religious believers (case study of the Republic of Mordovia). From author’s point of view, the religiosity of modern Russian orthodox believers at a level of religious representations, and also motivations of behavior, includes both religious (orthodox christian), and secular attitudes and values including a priority of an individual choice in regulation by believers of a degree of the communication with the parish communities and submission to authority of clergy of various levels, and also regulation of own ritual behavior; attitudes to personal interpretation of religious doctrines on the basis of representations both orthodox as “heterodox”, magic and quasi-religious or quasi-scientific character; attitudes of a part of orthodox believers on independent, besides the parish community, forming of their relations with God; the “goal-directed” attitude to religion as to means of decision of the practical everyday problems; a priority of secular values in everyday behavior of the believers.The motives of such believers may be quite different, but all they recognize the Church’s authority to such extent to what they need, also they arrange their ritual behavior and contacts with priests in their own manner, looking at their religiosity as the part of their private life which requires their personal needs. Such religiosity demonstrates their cultural and ethnic/national identity, but it doesn’t integrate such believers into local parish communities. So, most of Russian Orthodox Christians must be defined as “secular believers”. Secular religiousity is that kind of religiousity which associated with the private life of believer and converted into the object of personal choice, personal conceptualization and personal regulation of the participation in religious practices. Secular believer is believer which construct ones relationship with God independently while declaring oneself belonging to the certain religious tradition. In the paper the social attitudes and features of religiousness of modern Russian believers on the Republic Mordovia example are analyzed. Concerning to data of mass interrogation of the population of Republic Mordovia the author does a conclusion that this region of Russia shows a typical case of «secular religiousness», poorly connected with institutional structure of religious communities and their ritual practices. In spite of the fact that approximately 90 % of the population, judging by data of interrogations, identify themselves as orthodox christians, their religiousness is characterized by weak degree of confessional involvement correlating with the tolerant attitude to representatives to other faiths. The survey data also demonstrate that religious values and installations do not render appreciable influence on consciousness and social behaviour of believers as the potential factor of harmonisation/desintegration of group interests, and also on opinion of respondents on actual political questions.

Keywords: church, secular religiosity, confession, believers, religious values, interreligious tolerance, religious identity.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.