The author presents and analyses, in regard with the subject, the data from a systematic sociological research study of religiosity of the citizens of Serbia which is relevant for the Republic of Serbia without Kosovo and Metohija. The study named ?Religiosity in Serbia and the EU integration process? was conducted twice, in 2010 and 2011, by the Christian Cultural Centre from Belgrade with the financial assistance of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Center for European Studies from Brussels. Before analysing the data, the author briefly discusses the various dimensions of religiosity.
In this text the author first tries to provide an answer on the number of religious people today in two post-communist and Orthodox countries, and then on the number of Orthodox believers in them. Therefore he analyzes numerous data from empirical evidence using a large number of indicators discussed in the text. The author first analyzes them as indicators of representative dimension of religiousness, then as indicators of beliefs in dogmatic core of Christianity, indicators of current church ritual practice and finally, as indicators of a traditional attitude towards religion and church. With these analyses the author tries to find the criterion or criteria which best express the religiousness of people in a particular area. The analysis identifies three approaches in Russian sociological and religious literature. The first one is defined as a classic, positivistic approach, the second one as post-classic or phenomenological, and the third one as synthetic. Then the author discusses the term attachment to religion and church and its indicators, as well as the indices which are sociologically more suitable for the research of the religious and church complex. In the end the author gives a few methodological instructions for a sociological and empirical research of religiousness.
This article has three parts: in the first part the authors discusses two theoretical ways of interpreting revival and revitalization of religion in Serbia. The first way takes religion as a public institution and implies mutual support of religious and non-religious factors, while the other way describes independent, internal religious revival emerging from the very core of religion and church as a divine institution and individual spiritual needs of believers for religiousness (terminal faith). In the second part, the author points to two different interpretations of empirical data on attachment to religion and church in Serbia accumulated in the last thirty years. The third part compares socio-demographic characteristics of religious people from twenty-five years ago and characteristics of contemporary believers.
The text is the last contribution to the title subject and a sequel to the two previous texts by the same author already published in this magazine. The text discusses the evolution of religious situation in Serbia, predominantly Orthodox one, in the last century and the first decade of the twenty-first century. A religious situation in such a long period of time is always discussed within the context of the entire Serbian society and lately by comparison with (non)religious Europe and Russia.
The author has envisaged to publish three articles in three issues of "Philosophy and Society" magazine in which, relying on the empirical scientific evidence, plans to reveal the scope and level of religiousness in some European countries, then to study the case of Russia in a separate text and finally to analyze religiousness of people in Serbia and their attachment to the church and religion. This sequence of publication has its own logics looking forward to the empirical research called "European Values Study" - a longitudinal and international comparative survey of human values - in almost all European countries including, for the first time, Serbia in 2008, the author first aims to present results of previous sociological research which are representative for the area of Europe, and then for the Orthodox area in the country with the highest number of Orthodox believers in the world. Therefore, in the last article the author will be able to compare the religious situation in Serbia not only with the (non)-religious Europe but the (non)-religious Orthodox Russia as well.
This article is the sequel to the author's text in the previous issue of the magazine 'Philosophy and Society'. The author discusses the evolution of religious consciousness among the population of Russia and the mutual relationship between society, religion and church describing it as a sort of religious balance. By examining the motion of the balance, the author analyzes the religious situation and the confessional structure of tzarist, soviet and modern Russia. Three types of confessional structure may be postulated during the period in question: a stable confessional structure of pre-revolutionary Russia, a destabilized confessional structure in soviet time, a restabilized structure during the nineties of the previous century, and a new stabilized confessional structure in recent years.
For the contemporary Serbian sociology of religion it is evident that the process of desecularization has been present on the social scene of Serbia in the last fifteen years. Sociologists have provided arguments for this claim based on data gathered in Serbia during this period. The religious changes in question have been empirically recorded in all aspects of attachment to religion (mainly Eastern Orthodoxy) and the church (Serbian Orthodox Church), that is, in aspects of religious identification, doctrinal beliefs and religious behavior. Certain political subjects and social scientists feel that social life in Serbia is getting increasingly, and that religion and church are exerting influence within social fields they are not supposed to, if Serbia is to become a secular, democratic state. The paper analyzes some major conditions of the clericalization of the Serbian society.
In this article I have dealt with empirical proofs for the Russian religious renaissance which came after the fall of the Soviet socialistic empire and carried on all through the nineties as a pro-religious (pro-orthodox) consensus and a religious belief. Likewise, I have dealt with proofs suggesting certain limitations of the renaissance in question which manifested mainly in irregular fulfillment of religious duties.
In this article the author has presented several important issues regarding the sociology of religion, but primarily the issue of the sociologically acceptable definition of religion both in theoretical and empirical research. Bearing in mind the sociology of religion in former Yugoslavia the author has first discussed the possibility of a general definition of the sociology of religion, but has stated the opposite view as well. Then he has dealt with the two basic approaches towards religion and two general definitions of sociology, namely substantial and functional ones. Finally the author has tried to define the religiousness in terms of sociological empirical research of human attachment to religion and church in post-socialism.
Considering this issue to be particularly significant as a research challenge for the sociologies of religion in the so-called post-socialist countries, the subject of this research has been to determine the character, status and direction of religious changes in predominantly orthodox territories of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and Russia that became evident in the last decade of the twentieth century marked by turbulent socio-political changes in those countries. With the subject of the research being defined in that way, the main goal of the research has been to identify and examine basic tendencies in religious changes. Relying on the huge empirical material on the changes in question, an attempt has been made to precisely detect the scope of these changes in the various areas of religious, spiritual and social lives of people in the period of the so-called post-socialist transformation (transition). Therefore, the goal of the research has not been just to determine the scope and direction of changes of religiousness with people, but also to try to set the above mentioned religious changes into the proper social context, which is the starting point in their theoretical explanation.
In an overview manner the authors keep a close watch on the general socio-political conditions in Serbia in their long-term perspective, incorporating into this framework the results of research on the relationship of people with religion and the Church - in other words, their religiosity. They use two methodological approaches: historical and sociological analysis, and experimental results on indicators of religiosity, or people's attachment to the Eastern Orthodox religion and the Eastern Orthodox Church in Serbia. Composition of the article: after introducing and choosing a methodological approach, the authors analyze people's attachment to religion and the Church in various social systems over time, describing the religious structure. In the first phase, before World War II, the religious structure is described as stable with a Pro-Orthodox consensus and without problematic issues. In the second phase, after World War II - as a destabilized religious structure with an emphasis on the process of atheization. In the third phase, in the early 90s of the last century - as a (re)stabilized religious structure in the process of desecularization of Serbian society. Finally, at the present time - as a restored religious structure, established during the 90s. The article promotes a sociological approach to spiritual and socio-psychological phenomena, with all the disadvantages of this approach in relation to the study of the phenomena of religion and religiosity.
This article is devoted to the sociological analysis of the attitudes of religious xenophobia among the most socially and culturally developed part of modern Russian youth, represented by students. The research discourse is formed at the intersection of the problems of ?risk society?, revitalisation of religion, and xenophobia. The main purpose of the study is to obtain a reflexive assessment of the religious characteristics of Russian students in terms of xenophobic reactions, discrimination, and violations of citizens? rights on religious grounds. The method of data collection was a mass survey of Russian students from one of the regions of the Russian Federation. It was revealed that at least 20% of students find some extremist practices around them. The internet is the leading platform for xenophobic and extremist antisocial practices. In the environment that young people observe, religious xenophobia has a much larger scope than it would seem, and the ?isthmus? that brings it into a position of extremism is much narrower than it appears at first glance. The lack of understanding of the continuity between the phenomena of xenophobia and extremism constricts the area of management of the situation and creates the possibility of critical risks of conflicts with destructive consequences.
In the contemporary sociology of religion that focuses on the study of Orthodox religiosity, especially in Russia and partly in Serbia, there are different theoretical and methodological approaches to assessing the criteria of orthodox religiosity in the population. Two criteria can be identified as paradigmatic cases: the first one could be called the classical or positivist approach and the second one could be named the alternative or phenomenological approach. Researchers who advocate the first approach believe that the criterion of religiosity must include some practical confirmation of the expressed cultural religiosity of the respondents or the population in general. Therefore, it is not enough to identify oneself as a believer or simply align oneself with a particular confessional community. Instead, this subjective position should be confirmed by objective facts such as the regular practice of religious rituals and ceremonies. Proponents of this approach argue that if we do not adhere to this, then the established number of believers is just fictional without any real content, and thus established believers are actually just imaginary believers. For supporters of the phenomenological approach to the criteria of Orthodox religiosity, the crucial criterion is the self-identification of the respondents and their awareness of belonging to a religious or confessional group. Authors of this persuasion do not talk so much about religiosity, but instead introduce the notion of churchiness, which is not a discrete position ? nor a fixed current state, like religiosity is considered among the first group of researchers ? but a process that begins at a certain point in time and more or less approaches the ideal requirements that a real, profoundly churched, true (Orthodox) believer should fulfil. The authors compare and analyse these approaches in the text, while at the same time presenting the rationale for a third method: the integral value- and reflection-based approach. This approach to the socio-logical criteria of religiosity is based on concepts of reflection, choice, and context. The criterion of religiosity is proposed as a stable, irreversible intention for immersion of a social actor into a religious context. As such, immersion into the very "core" of religion becomes a basic indicator of a per-son?s religious value-based orientation.
