Attitude to Buddhism and Orthodox Christianity at the modern stage of Russian society development

Volume 3, Number 3, 2018, P. 72–78

[ SOCIOLOGICAL SCIENCES ]

Article (file: pdf, size: 308 KB, downloads: 600)

Abstract:

Basing on the secondary analysis of sociological surveys conducted by the largest sociological public opinion centers in 1990-2017, the article provides the conclusion about the relevance and importance of study of attitudes to Buddhism, especially in the European part of Russia where Buddhism is not a traditional religion. The level of religious tolerance towards Buddhists in Russia remains unchanged. That is because traditionally Russia is a multicultural and multifaith space. Besides, the «author’s versions» of Buddhism make it customized and understandable for Russian Europeans, thereby modernizing traditional Buddhism of Kalmykia, Buryatia, Tuva, Zabaikalye territory. The article presents the main tendencies of religiosity of modern Russians, who are mostly orthodox as the largest religious group: increase in the number of people reporting to be affiliated with a religion, religious affiliation based on cultural identification as distinguished from their own religious motivation, superficiality of religiosity manifested in not attending the church, non-participation in religious holidays, etc. The author suggests using the methods of qualitative measurement to study the real religious tolerance of Russians towards Buddhists. It can be provided by using an integrated approach that includes: historical (the questions of the history of the development of religious tolerance are crux), territorial (the study of tolerance in various territorial entities), institutional-group (tolerance of various socio-demographic groups and religions as a social institution), factorial (the study of religious tolerance as a factor in the development of social life or its separate process, as well as the preservation of security in general) approaches.

Keywords:

Buddhism, Orthodox Christianity, Russia, religiosity, religious tolerance, religious behavior

Author:

Evgenia G. Kopalkina, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Associate Professor of Sociology and Psychology Department of Irkutsk National Research Technical University, Irkutsk, Russia

Financing:

The study was completed as a part of the Russian Science Foundation research project No. 14-18-00444 “Buddhism in the socio-political and cultural processes of Russia, Inner and East Asia: transformations and perspectives”.

For citation:

Kopalkina E.G. Attitude to Buddhism and Orthodox Christianity at the modern stage of Russian society development. Sotsial’naya kompetentnost’ = Social Competence. 2018;3(3): 72–78. (In Russ.).

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