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Regardless of the role religion plays in the world today, ie despite the significant deprivatization of faith in the sociocultural space & in politics, contemporary Czech sociology of religion is in rather poor shape. The author presents a number of factors to explain this, including the legacy of the communist regime, & low levels of church attendance in the Czech Republic, the latter having been erroneously interpreted as non-religiosity. But the author focuses mainly one other reason: the discordant legacy of Czech pre-communist sociology of religion & the neighboring field of social studies. Two different traditions of the subject are identified - the 'profane' sociology of religion, founded by T. G. Masaryk, & Catholic religious sociology. Although the former legacy declared itself non-religious & even anti-clerical, in the case of many of its followers this claim was only partially true. In the 1930s & 1940s, when they (especially Prague's sociological school, which formed a certain opposition to Masaryk) turned more toward Durkheimian attitudes, they emphasized, for example, their own religious experience as a necessary tool for understanding piety. On the other hand, Catholic religious sociology was closely related to church activism, policy, & contemporary social work, ie, strictly conservative & anti-modern. Its way of understanding modern society was discounted by the former group of scholars, though to at least some degree, the two legacies shared similar methodological approaches. Both certainly seem outdated today, but their theoretical & methodological discussions & their findings remain of importance. Consequently, a re-thinking of these legacies & their theoretical backgrounds is still significant for the sociology of religion today.

Different organizational structures of the Catholic Church in Slovenia were a reflection of the circumstances in the Christian community in the Central European region. Being a basic structure, a diocese has existed since the antique period. The diocese is a religious community with a centre in a large settlement (civitas). With the spread of Christianity into the rural areas and into the peasant environment, parishes began to come into existence. In historiography, the terms 'primitive parishes' began to be used to refer to the oldest parishes. They were characterized by their vastness. The number of primitive parishes increased in the 12th century. Due to remoteness of diocesan centres from the communities in rural areas and because of the inability of bishops to be in touch with the priests in rural areas, intermediate stages of organization were coming into existence during centuries, i.e., archdeaconries and deaneries at some places. Some important changes occurred in the operation of the Catholic Church and in its organization in Slovenia during the years after the Second World War. New parishes were established. The change of the state boundaries required changing the diocesan boundaries. Finally, the creation of the independent state of the Republic of Slovenia required a new setting up of the pastoral work and a new territorial organization of dioceses. Adapted from the source document.

The article proposes to improve using of the concepts "freedom of religion" or "freedom of faith" and "legal religious tolerance". Such categories as "freedom of religion" or "freedom of faith" are more popular now in the state and international legal acts.

The application of hermeneutic, comparative, historical, formal legal and dialectical methods of scientific research allows concluding that the term "legal religious tolerance" is better suited to the realities of the legal system than the concept of "freedom of religion" or "freedom of faith". The content of the concept of "freedom of religion" as one of the main categories of human rights and freedoms enshrined in international acts and in the legislation of the most states of the Western Legal Tradition is based on the philosophical ideas of the early modern period. Despite the humanity and the enlightening liberality of those ideas, they remain too idealized and complicated in their practical legal application. The legal content of the concept of "religious tolerance", with all the disadvantages of its vagueness, due to its hermeneutic flexibility leaves much more space for the practical law enforcement.

The categories of "state religion" and "religion of the majority population" are supposed to exist. It does not require absolute detachment of public authorities from regulating religious relationships. Moreover, it mitigates collisions between the application of this right and other civil rights. The author states that using of the legal category of "religious tolerance" is much more suitable. Since its content is in line with the canons of the religious laws of the different religions, natural law, and the historical legal tradition of the long development of society, the concept of "religious tolerance" should be used for the regulation of the religious legal relations in the states with different religious communities.

Spinoza, Pufendorf and Locke all championed freedom of thought (including freedom of religion) and of speech; all three thinkers deserve credit for having forged the fundamental principles of the liberal tradition. Spinoza, in particular, was the first writer in modern times to articulate a systematic defence of democracy. He believed that the state should promote the welfare of its citizens, while maximising their freedom. Although he equated right with power, he also advocated respect for the moral law, stressing the importance of being good to other people. Keywords: Spinoza, Pufendorf, Locke, freedom of religion, freedom of thought, liberalism

Today, in many countries around the world, the role of religion in the public sphere is strengthening. This causes the methodological problems of the theory of secularization, which claimed the gradual and irreversible decline of religion. At the same time, the processes of religious revival in societies that have undergone secularization do not lead to the restoration of religion in the forms that preceded it. To denote this state of society, which occurs after secularization, Jürgen Habermas proposed to use the term "post-secular". A number of both foreign and domestic scientists became interested in this issue. But the purposeful study of postsecularity is still in its infancy and is mostly descriptive. In the scientific works devoted to its research, insufficient attention is focused on specific characteristics of postsecular societies. Therefore, there is a need to generalize these characteristics in order to better understand post-secular society. To achieve this goal, the article analyzes some conceptual approaches to the study of postsecularity. These approaches argue that the "return" of religion does not preclude the preservation of a powerful (or even dominant) secularization cluster in society. Post-secularization is a move forward and the creation of a new system characterized by religious freedom, pluralism, competition between different denominations, rather than a return to the traditions of the pre-modern era. In a post-secular society, as the authors of the works analyzed in the article prove, religion has all the opportunities from secular power for its development. At the same time, there is a reduction in the role of religious institutions and the individualization of religious practices, ie the "privatization" of religion, which is an element of secularization. But this "privatization" is significantly different from secularization, because it is not due to coercion, but to pluralism of choice. According to many researchers, a post-secular situation is possible under the condition of ideological pluralism and parity between religious and non-religious people, when each party has the opportunity to propagate its opinion, but does not impose it, when there is no place for privileged and discriminated, but awareness of mutual coexistence. That is, post-secularity is possible only in democratic and legal societies. The post-secular situation is also characterized by religious competition, intensification of missionary work, manifestations of fundamentalism, globalization of religious piety, transformation of religion into a commodity and the emergence (mostly in the West) of the phenomenon used to refer to the term "spirituality". The situation of post-secularism is a situation of uncertainty, when it is not known how the processes of interaction between the secular and the religious will take place in the future, and it is impossible to make any predictions about how stable this situation is. As the analysis carried out in the article shows, the post-secular approach has not become a full-fledged theory, but is perceived mostly as a program of what should be paid attention to, as a certain correction and continuation of the secularization approach. But with its help, scientists are trying to describe religious processes in modern societies.

The article focuses on the main trends in the revival of religion in the modern world, its active presence in global politics and international relations. It is substantiated that the religious revival at the turn of 1980-1990 in Ukraine, sharp Orthodox-Greek-Catholic and inter-Orthodox conflicts were the result of significant distortions of its institutional and confessional space caused by the party-Soviet religious policy. Special and specific signs of "return of religion" in Ukraine in the context of global religious changes, in particular, the dynamism, complexity and to this day the incompleteness of this process. The content and essential characteristics of the mutual influences of socio-cultural transformations and dynamics of changes in the religious complex of modern Ukraine, the influence of events related to the Revolution of Dignity and the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war in the East of the country are analyzed. Peculiarities of life and social positioning of the main actors of the Ukrainian religious landscape, in particular, institutions of the Orthodox complex, UGCC, Protestant denominations, Islamic community, new religious movements are revealed. A number of difficult challenges facing the newly formed Orthodox Church of Ukraine are substantiated - ensuring internal unity, minimizing conflicts, creating their own landmark projects, finding a dialogical model of church reconciliation to overcome the religious frontier of the division of Ukrainian society. The dynamics of public ideas, clear ambivalence and controversy of public consciousness in the religious aspect - from the traditionally high level of trust in religion and the church, to a steady decline in assessments of their importance in the lives of citizens and socio-political processes. Conclusions and proposals on the intensification of the state policy of nationalcivil consolidation and active involvement of religion and religious organizations in this process have been formulated.

The statute of March 15, 2004, that banned religious symbols in the French schools & State high schools, was the last act of the Headscarf Affair which had been regularly returning to the limelight of the French political scene since 1989. The review of several recent sociological books devoted to the phenomena of islamization helps to buttress the main assumption of the article that the Affair is a symptom of a failing integration of the immigrants from the Muslim countries. These populations are disproportionately hit by social & economic marginalization while, at the same time, summoned to assimilate culturally. Dogmatic republicanism conceives of the assimilation as a necessary precondition for the political integration. In the situation of an increasing social exclusion, however, the push to assimilation adds a cultural offense to an economic injury & incites a contrary reaction: a proud self-assertion of the Muslim identity. The statute banning the headscarves only intensifies this vicious dynamic. The analyses in the reviewed books seem to lead to a different solution: a reasonable response would rather be to tolerate the expressions of religious distinctiveness while, at the same time, trying to integrate people of immigrant origins both economically & politically. This would require, however, a reconstruction of the French republicanism which -- at least in its dogmatic form -- does not distinguish between the cultural & political sides of integration. 9 References. Adapted from the source document.

The article deals with the factors that affect the tax morale of the population of the Visegrad Four countries, i.e. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The evaluation of the answers of the respondents of the European Values Study to the question of whether they justify tax evasion serves as an indicator of tax morale. The authors work on the one hand with the frequency of answers expressing a complete rejection of fraud and on the other hand with average answers on a scale from 1 to 10. Respondents from Slovakia were found to be justifying tax fraud the most, and Polish and Hungarian residents agreed with tax evasion the least. Furthermore, the dependence of tax morale on gender, religion and satisfaction with the political system was analysed. Using contingency tables, it was found that all the monitored factors have a statistically significant effect on the tendency of people to justify tax evasion. The only exceptions were the factor of religion in the Czech Republic and the influence of satisfaction with the political system in Poland, where the relationship with tax morale was not confirmed.